


longing will snag itself on the reeds

by insanetwin



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dead People, F/F, Set sometime five years after Season 4, Sex, Zombies, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:48:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 66,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4677425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insanetwin/pseuds/insanetwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day the dead wake up to return to their families. Zombie AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. wake up

**Author's Note:**

> small disclaimer: this has seriously been such a WONDERFUL experience, I just want to thank everyone whose decided to read this story, it's been such a journey. I just want to thank everyone who's been involved: my cheerleader piiinco, my beta directionis and artist dragoon23! Thank you so much!
> 
> This idea is inspired from "the Returned" or Les Revenants
> 
> also: just ignore that Zelena was murdered at the end of 3b. it just never happened.

Anything dead coming back to life hurts - Toni Morrison, Beloved

*

Regina wakes with a start, gulping in a mouthful of ocean water. The surface is far above her, murky with a liquid light from above and, realizing where she is, her body bucks in a sudden spasm of terror, lifting her urgently up toward the surface.

“Oh god.” she gasps.

All around her is sleek grey water, her arms and legs moving in numb circles to stay afloat. Her thoughts are lost in her terror, but as she glances all around her she can recognize the blurry trees in the distance, the glow of the town just beyond the upward slope of a hill, cars whirring quietly across the stone bridge above her.

A bleary memory returns to her, almost dreamlike, although it had happened quickly at the time: the car hitting her, the burst of glass and the sudden, terrifying swerve over the bridge and into the black depths beneath her.

Cold and shivering, she glances briefly at the darkness below, no sight of her car anywhere. Or anyone else’s. But she can’t think about that, now – whoever hit her might be on their way to the hospital just as her car is on its way to the bottom of the ocean. She doesn’t have to think about anything else. She just has to survive.

With stiff, cold limbs, she makes an attempt toward the shore. One of her heels slips off her foot and, feeling lighter, she quickly kicks off the other one. The shore is just a soft blurry line in the distance, but she’s a strong swimmer. Strong enough. She can make this.

The water weighs in her wet clothes and her fingers grow stiff and unresponsive, but she doesn’t stop, her muscles burning with her effort, salt water slapping against her face, the cold wind stealing her breath. She doesn’t stop even when her lungs seize and her body slides into a numb kind of silence, cold and shivering, she doesn’t stop until she can feel the soft mushy soil beneath her feet, her fingers grasping at the wet weedy plants along the shore, helping to pull her up.

The beach is empty and quiet; she collapses, breathless and gasping in the wet sand, the salt stinging on her cold cheeks and cracked lips.

But she’s alive.

She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive.

*

The walk home is long. Cars rumble steadily by and she watches them go, the glow of their headlights poking through the dark and disappearing around the corner. The wind has a bitter edge to it, and she can do nothing more than gather her jacket closer, tucking her fingers under her arms for warmth.

Trudging up a hill, the familiar shape of her house peek through the hanging telephone wires, the stilted roof and stone cowls, its manicured lawn and cobbled walkway, looking exactly the way it did when she left it that morning. Relief wells in her and she sucks in a sharp breath, moving a little quicker up the icy sidewalk.

On her steps, she fumbles briefly with a spare key before entering, breathing in its slightly different air, warm and smelling of home.

“Henry?” she asks, and slides off her wet coat. “Are you home, dear?”

From a distance, she can hear a pause, an action becoming incomplete as the rusty squeak of door stops half way. But nobody steps out to meet her, and though she waits, the stairway remains dim and empty.

Hesitantly, she peeks up at the darkened rooms above the stairs. “Emma?” she asks, (because sometimes Emma is here, uninvited, yes, but not unwelcome) “Emma? Are you here?”

But nobody answers.

A hollow feeling gathers in her chest and so she leaves for her kitchen, suddenly hungry, exhausted by salt-water. On the marble white counter there is a vase of flowers on the table filled with spry white daisies and she smiles at it as she passes, opening the fridge.

Though she doesn’t remember buying it, there is a bag of deli meat on the bottom drawer and she grabs a piece, folding it in half and eating it in just a few bites ( _embarrassing_ , she knows, and Henry would make fun of her if he saw like this, but she’s _hungry_ and it’s the only thing she can think to stomach right now).

She’s eaten three pieces before she notices Emma by the door.

“Shit.” She yelps, dropping the bag on the floor. “Emma, what the _hell._ ”

Emma stares at her with wide eyes from the door way.

“You scared me.” Regina sighs and bends for the package on the floor. She can see Emma’s bare feet in the doorway, pale and strange in the dim light, standing still. Frowning, she straightens, “Where have you been? Did you not hear me calling you?” Emma doesn’t answer, only stares at her with the same cloudy quality of the sky. “Are you alright?” she asks with a frown.

“Uh…” Emma blinks and slowly shakes her head, glancing away to the front door where her coat is hanging. “Yeah.” she finally breathes, still staring out at the entry way.

“You don’t seem okay.” Regina purses her lips, her mind leaping for an answer. When Emma looks back at her, something clicks, and she sighs. Of course they would call her. She’s the Sherriff; she’s the first person they would call. “You heard about the crash, didn’t you?” she says, tone gentle.

But Emma only stares at her, and the numb look of shock on her face unfolds a slick, strangeness inside of her like sea weed tickling the bottom of her feet as she wades blindly in the water, a sense of something immense all around her.

“Well, anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t call.” Regina continues on her own, busying herself with opening the fridge to ignore it “I know you must have been worried, but my phone in the crash and I just wanted to get home.”

Emma nods silently and Regina peeks at her from the top of the refrigerator door. She doesn’t know how to make of the teary, red eyes or the pale, sallow skin.

“Did everyone make it out alright?” she asks with a tick of impatience. Because something must be wrong – it must. Usually Emma would have told her by now.

“What?” Emma asks unevenly.

She sighs with impatience. “The man who hit me, Emma. Did he make it out alright?”

“Oh. Yeah.” she says quietly. “Yeah. He made it.”

“Good.” She sternly closes the refrigerator door, the silence unsettling between them. It feels too large, frightening, and so after a moment of hesitation she turns to close it because if there is one thing she’s come to know about Emma is the warmth in which she accepts affection. But Emma wobbles back half a step and Regina halts immediately, startled. “Are you _alright_?” she snaps, hurt and irritated.

“Yeah-Yeah, I’m fine.” Emma says, but she looks light, as thin and weightless as leaves, about to blow away in any moment.

“Where is Henry?” she asks, her shoulders stiff, struggling to keep her voice sharp.

“Um. With a friend.” Emma glances distractedly at the oven where the time blinks back at her in green numbers. “Yeah, he’s still with a friend.”

“A friend?” She glances outside where the light is already turning dark, turning grey. It’s been years since Henry’s skipped out on his daily schedule, years since she’d come home without him there, waiting for her. “It’s a school night, isn’t it?”

Emma just stares helplessly at her and the faint hum of distress inside of her begins to expand, unfolding into something far bigger – something immense.

“Alright.” she says, her fingers tremble as they flick back her hair, “I’m going to take a shower. And get out of these disgusting clothes. And then when I come back, we are going to talk about whatever the hell is going on here. Alright?”

At Emma’s numb nod, she strides past her and up the stairs, urged by the almost frantic need to simply be clean, to stand beneath warm water and feel the salt and weight of this day slide away from her, rubbed away, to smoother, softer skin.

In the bathroom, she undresses quickly, peeling off her wet dank clothes surrounded by the familiar cleanliness of her bathroom. There is some comfort in it: in the expensive lotions lining the counter and her robe, soft and blue, still hanging on the metal hook behind the door. The familiar details.

Stepping in, she faces the warm spray of water and lets everything else fall away.

By the time she showered, walking barefoot down the stairs in new clean clothes, she feels confident that the oddness of the day is behind her. She’ll walk back down stairs and be met with everything back in order: Emma with her usual goofy self, her son returned, and her house feeling exactly like it did when she left it this morning.

Down the stairs, however, she can hear Emma on the phone and halts by the hesitant uneven sound of her voice.

“I don’t know,” Emma says, her back facing Regina, wiping tears blindly with a trembling hand. “I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t even know what to think of it. I just need you to come here, alright? Please?”

The good feeling inside of her collapses and Regina remains frozen on the stairs, the tips of her fingers suddenly cold.

“I know.” Emma sighs tiredly, “That’s why I’m calling you.” Regina feels the stiffness in her legs loosening, allowing her to travel down the stairs to the floor, her bare feet soundless on the floor. She stands close enough to hear Emma take a deep breath. “Alright,” she sighs. “Thank you. See you soon.”

“Who was that?” She asks.

Emma jumps and whirls around, “Regina.” she yelps, her eyes wide and red. The fingers around the phone tighten, turning white. “God, you scared me.”

“Who was that on the phone?” she asks, her voice dry.

“Snow,” Emma swallows. “Just Snow.”

“Why were you asking her to come over?”

“She , uh, you know...” Emma huffs out a soft, harried breath, rubbing a rough palm underneath her eye. “Was worried about the crash. I thought maybe she’d want to check up on you.” The lie feels like bristles against her skin.

“Really?” she asks, feeling her anger rising. “So my crash is already fairly well known, then?”

“Well.” Emma steps back nervously. “Yeah. You know. It’s a small town.”

“So where is Henry?” She continues relentlessly. “If Snow White is so concerned, I can’t imagine how my son might feel. And yet he isn’t here. So he either doesn’t know, or something is going on that you’re not telling me.”

Emma flinches and Regina’s anger falls away. She steps forward to be closer, but halts when Emma steps away from her again, her face edgy and unsure. Regina sighs and rests against the counter until her heart stops aching.

“What is going on here, Emma?” she finally asks, brushing a wary hand through her hair.

“Nothing.” she whispers.

“Then _why_ are you acting so strange?”

“I’m not.”

Her skin prickles, feeling strange. “Do you think I don’t know what goes on in my house?” She asks. “You expect me to believe Henry is out late with friends? On a _school night_? I know my son better than that. I know _you_ better than that – Emma, _look at you_ , you’re _trembling_ , you can’t look me in the eye, you’ve _obviously_ been crying, and you keep backing away from me!”

“I’m _sorry_.” Emma caves and looks so suddenly like the person she was all those years ago when the curse refused to break and held their son hostage – when a bright, raw world was opening up all around her. Regina halts immediately, recognizing the fear in her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what – I don’t know what’s happening, at all. I don’t know what to do.”

“What to _do_?” Regina echoes quietly, “Emma, I just want an honest answer from you.”

“I can’t give you one.” Emma breathes unevenly, “I don’t even know what to _think_. You were…you were gone. I know that, and you could still be, but this is goddamn Storybrook and fucked up things always happen, so what the fuck am I supposed to believe, right?”

“What –” Regina starts to say, but stops, cutting herself off because there is an idea forming in the back of her head, a large, immense thought that fills the ocean in her lungs and pulls her down with the weight of her wet clothes – too frightening to consider, too terrible – so she pushes it away instead.

“God.” A hand curls around Emma’s eyes, the sound of her breath catching in her throat, “I’m going crazy.”

“No, you’re not.” She soothes. The tears in Emma’s eyes fill her with a new kind of emergency: to ease Emma out of her worry, out of the havoc twisting her face. “You’re alright.” When Emma looks up at her with wet, frightened eyes she sighs. “Oh, Emma,” she coos. “It’s alright, dear, I promise. Everything is alright.”

Emma’s mouth trembles as she slowly nods. She must be holding her breath, because her chest quivers after a moment, and Regina opens her arms to her, the same way she did when Henry had a nightmare, bundled up in his bedsheets, struggling as Emma does with a body’s natural and unexpected betrayals: the sudden hitches of her breath, the way throats close up and tears blind.

Emma falls into her arms like he did, too.

“It’s alright.” She soothes, sliding her arms around Emma’s waist. She rests her chin on the slope of Emma’s shoulder and repeats those words until it starts to feel true, until Emma’s breathing begins to even out and the hands making fists in the back of her shirt soften their grip.

After a while, Emma tilts her head away. “God,” she laughs softly and wipes at her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no.” she soothes. “Don’t apologize.”

“I mean your shirt.” Emma smiles. “You smell like salt water all over again.”

“I’ll survive.” she smiles and feels Emma’s arms tighten around her. Craning her neck, she peeks at her ruddy wet cheeks and closed eyes. “Do you feel better?” she whispers.

Emma gently nods. Regina suspects the hug to end, for them to step back to their normalcy, but Emma only presses her head back against Regina’s neck. It makes her heart feel warm, an old yearning tangling itself in all the new questions, gathering like the gentle fingers against her back, crinkling her shirt.

Sighing, she closes her eyes and allows time to pass. There is a warm kind of forgetfulness in Emma’s arms, in the soft, even breathing and the vague smell of her clean clothes and shampoo, so familiar it’s a struggle to remember that there are still questions to ask. That things aren’t quite right yet.

“Does Henry know about the crash?” she asks after a while, holding tighter when Emma stiffens. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I would like to be prepared. I wasn’t prepared at all for you, my dear.”

There is a moment of hesitation. Finally, Emma sighs. “Yes. He knows. He’s going to be here soon.” she says, and then with a quick smile, she pulls away. “Are you hungry?”

Regina opens her mouth with _No_ but her stomach reacts before she does and Emma laughs at her.

“Alright.” she says. “I’ll make you something.” But she only makes it to the fridge before she startles, the front door slamming shut.

Blinking, Regina looks over the counter to see Henry’s back moving swiftly up the stairs.

“Shit.” Emma mumbles, but Regina doesn’t hear – she doesn’t let herself hear it – her heart caught in the familiar sight of her son, in his broad shoulders and his dark hair, in his thin arms and that ugly grey sweater.

“Henry!” she calls but he’s already up the stairs, closing his door.

She strides out of the kitchen, urged by the hard beating in her heart, rushing in her chest, the need to see her son. She can hear Emma following quickly behind her, feel the tip of her fingers catch at the corner of her shirt, her hesitant, “Regina, wait.” But she is already at the stairs, wrenching free, the need to see Henry suddenly unbearable.

She knocks only as a warning before entering. “Henry.” she steps inside, readying a smile for him.

That smile stays even as the darkened room surrounds her, the walls covered in posters and maps, the books and toys gone, the room suddenly completely unfamiliar to her. She blinks, glancing quickly at every corner before she finds Henry standing stock still in the center of the room, too tall, his face longer and far too old to be her little boy, her sweet thirteen year old.

“What-“she stumbles back a half step. “You’re not Henry.” She says, but even as she says it she knows it’s not true; she recognizes the boy in this face, so familiar, but not the one she kissed goodbye this morning. “I don’t – I don’t understand. I left the house just this morning. I- I was…” she begins to say, but her breath comes up short, and she can’t get the rest out.

Henry just stares at her, his eyes dark and horrified.

It unfolds a greater fear than the one she had felt in the water, her memories returning to her, weak and watery like a dream, filled with freezing black water and struggle; she remembers the glass breaking, her numb fingers scrabbling to unlock her seat belt, not quite quick enough, her body strapped and sinking, becoming heavy with sea-water as she watched the surface disappear above her.

“No,” Regina gasps, stepping back. She can feel Emma right beside her, waiting. “No, I-“ she struggles to breathe and it echoes weakly in her memory, the feeling of no air, gasping, swallowing sea water between breaths as her lungs sat in her chest like a half deflated balloon, a hand clutched around it, tightening. “I got out,” she chokes out, “I swam to shore, I made it home.”

Emma’s arms fold silently around her. “It’s alright,” Emma says against her ear again and again, but it isn’t. Nothing is. She can feel the grave distance between her and the world she lived in, suddenly changed, suddenly different.

She stares into her son’s dark eyes, his hardened, horrified face and reaches out for him, sucking in a watery breath when he steps back, widening the distance. He stands, older, taller, a complete stranger to her, and she curls into Emma’s arms, feeling the weight of the ocean all around her again, dragging her down to its murky bottom, separating her, gently, from the ones she loved.

*

In the living room Regina listens to the sounds just above her head, the creaking of the floorboards and the passing of feet. Once Snow and Charming arrived, things had moved more quickly, dividing them with unrest and fear, the Charmings knotting around Henry as Emma stayed firm and loyal at her side, losing her breath arguing with them.

She meant to stay, but in the face of all that anger and confusion she found herself slipping away instead, down the stairs to her living room and the small corner where her couch sits stiffly. Sitting motionlessly, she can hear their voices now, softened through the distance, reverberating through the walls.

There is Charming’s quiet murmur, “Maybe we should all calm down.”

“I can’t believe you right now,” Emma intervenes, her voice heated. “That’s Regina, that’s her. It’s gotta be!”

“And how could you possibly know that Emma?” Snow’s voice is a sharper reflection of Emma’s, “People just don’t come back from the dead. It doesn’t work like that, not without consequences.” There is a short pause, and Regina listens closely despite herself. “I think your feelings are fogging your judgement. You’re not thinking about what’s best for Henry. Or yourself.”

“Oh, fucking come on-”

“She’s been dead for _years,_ Emma! We _buried_ her, we had a funeral. I _know_ you are struggling, we all are-” Snow’s voice rises, likely from Emma’s reaction, whatever it may be, but Snow refuses to be cut off, “But you have to think of Henry first. You have to think about what this might do to him if you’re wrong and that woman down there is not the person you think she is.”

Emma says something else, but she can’t hear it over the scuffle of movement as the door opened and closed, Emma’s bare feet moving across the hall and down the stairs. Regina straightens her shoulders, sitting guiltily in the silence that pauses at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey.” Emma frowns, glancing up at the top of the stairs and then back down. “I guess you heard all that, didn’t you?”

“It’s fine,” she lies and looks away.

“I’m sorry,” Emma sighs.

She manages a small shrug, feeling the dull ache in her spine from being motionless for so long. Slowly, she rests back into the couch. “How is Henry?”

“Um.” Emma tucks her hands into her back pockets so that the pink curves of her thumbs hang out. “Good. Snow and David are going to talk to him for a little while.”

“About how I am a danger to him?” She remarks dryly.

Emma doesn’t argue; she looks away, instead, her thumbs turning down, hiding into the flat of her palm.

It’s this, somehow, that wells the emptiness in her chest.

“Well perhaps he should know,” she says and can feel the sharp surprise in Emma’s eyes, even if she can’t let herself look. “As your mother said, the dead don’t just _come back._ ” The word tastes foreign in her mouth, like salt water, as bitter as the words that follow. “Or at least not for any good reason. Not for any reason you’d want.” She thinks of the stables and of bruising fingers, the smell of straw, and horses shifting nervously, watching as life caved in and turned to dust.

“Regina.”

“We might as well be honest with ourselves, dear,” she says and though she keeps her voice firm, almost indifferent, she can’t look up from her hands. “The last time someone came back from the dead they ripped off a man’s arm.”

“Sorry, but have you ripped off someone’s arm, yet?”

Regina levels a glare at her. “Don’t be childish.”

“What?” Emma retorts. “We’re aware of _one_ other case of something like this happening and it came from fucking Frankenstein, so kind of bound to be fucked up, in my opinion. And Daniel was….” Her sentence trails off when Regina’s eyes snap up, sharp and focused, worrying Emma’s mouth into a gentle frown. “Well…he was… _gone_ for a lot longer.”

“Dead is dead, Emma,” she snaps. “The amount of time that passes is irrelevant.”

“Not to me.” There is a sharp edge to her voice and Regina looks up just in time to see Emma’s face flicker and then close, watching her draw in a long breath and close her arms protectively around her chest. “Look – you said it yourself, magic is unpredictable. It’s done weird shit before. It’s done _a lot_ of impossible things. Why can’t we just take this as what it is?”

“And just _what_ is this, then?”

“I don’t know!” Emma exclaims, “I have no idea what this is. But you were gone for _years_ and now you’re here looking exactly as you had before, so why can’t we just be _happy_ about that?”

“Because we don’t know if this is _permanent_ – “

“You’re right, we don’t!” The space between them evaporates in two large steps, Regina suddenly looking directly up at Emma’s face and into her wild eyes. “We have no way of knowing how this will go. You could disappear _tomorrow_ or you might live the rest of your life like you were supposed to. I have no idea, but yesterday you were just _gone_ so maybe whatever this is, it’s good enough”

It probably shouldn’t surprise her how much Emma’s eyes seem to _well_ , how much _feeling_ there is between them in this moment. But it does. It’s as startling as when she first saw it, so clearly, so obviously, in that night in her vault so long ago (longer than she wants to think about), her face flushed and her voice a quiet whispers.

It still feels new – being this important to Emma.

For Emma, it must feel like a stale fact, like cold coffee or like dust gathering on a shelf. She presses her back against the couch to reorder herself.

“Alright,” she says.

Emma blinks and then nods, slowly straightening up to stand awkwardly above her, gangly, tall, filled with so much.

“Sorry,” she mumbles after a beat, her voice a quiet wobble. “For, uh, yelling.”

Waving a dismissive hand, she pats the space beside her when Emma remains standing stiffly, as though there were hands in her shoulders and arms and legs keeping her still. Emma sighs deeply and settles into the small space beside her with relief, thighs and arms brushing against her, warm and comforting.

They fall into a comfortable silence, ignoring the quiet hush of voices above them, returning now in the brief quiet, still audible through the distance of stairs and thin walls; it runs on in the distance like running water, a quiet background, gathering thoughts in her head the way rivers join in lakes, carrying with them all the years that passed on without her notice, piling up like dirt, growing heavier and heavier.

The feeling gets stuck in her throat, wet and clotted. “How…” her voice sticks, forcing her to clear her throat. “How old is he?”

Emma’s head turns to her slowly, her eyes clear, grey, and knowing. “Eighteen.”

It feels like a fist to the chest. “Eighteen?”

Dizzily, she remembers the small child she lifted up from a crib so long ago, wrapped in a soft blue blanket. The child she sang lullabies to, and who grabbed fistfuls of her hair whenever he could. The child who fell asleep to the sound of her heart beating, who she once promised to never leave –

“So I’ve been…” she swallows, the word _dead_ sitting solidly in her mouth like dirt. “I’ve been gone for five years.” She sinks back into the couch. “But _how_? How is this even _happenin_ g?”

“I don’t know.” Emma rests a hesitating hand on her knee. “I know this must feel terrifying. I can’t even imagine. But I want you to know – whatever happens – I got your back.” Emma’s eyes find hers, and Regina feels the heaviness of those words, said so many times before. “No matter how this turns out, I’m here for you.”

Regina looks over her expression closely, scrutinizing for small changes these five years might have made of her expression, but Emma’s face is still familiar. “I wonder if you’re prepared for what that might mean.”

“Can’t be worse than losing you again.” Emma says, the corner of her mouth pulling up into a light smile, her hand squeezing tenderly. “Maybe just give me a bit of a warning if you start craving human flesh.”

A wake of nervousness creeps around Regina’s back, but her heart catches at the words – at Emma’s soft face and the severe, genuine look in her eyes. Still her Emma.

“You’re as much as an idiot as you were five years ago,” she says, and when Emma’s eyes crinkle Regina feels her hand slide off her lap and seek out Emma’s, curling over knobby white knuckles and a warm calloused palm.

She squeezes gently and is relieved to feel Emma squeeze back.

Minutes pass in a comfortable silence, Emma and Regina sitting side by side, still holding each other’s hands. They only separate when there is the sound of movement at the top of the stairs, lifting Regina immediately to her feet.

Turning, she watches as David walks down first and then Snow and finally, Henry. He does not look at her, his head bent away, but she can see his eyes, dark and lined with red.

“Henry.” she starts to say, swiftly cut off by Snow.

“Emma, we are going home,” Snow doesn’t look at her. “I hope you plan to think a little more reasonably about this.” Her eyes cut to Regina, dark and unyielding; Regina tries to return it, feeling the stir of anger in the pit of her stomach, but it passes through her dry like sand and she’s left staring at Henry’s face instead.

“Right,” Emma sighs tiredly.

Snow is already turning away to pull Henry into a swift hug. There must be brief exchange of private words because Henry nods quietly and Snow squeezes his shoulder before turning back to the door, Henry close behind, never once looking back at her.

She startles at the sight of her son walking out toward the door. “Wait,” she follows on weak legs, her voice breathless. But they don’t turn to look at her, so she clears it away, reaches for the woman who can fight, the Evil Queen. “ _Stop_.”

Snow pauses hesitantly, turning back to face her. “Yes?”

Closing some of the distance, Regina refuses to feel small even in her bare feet and tear-streaked cheeks. “My son.” she lifts her chin. “He belongs here with me. Whether you believe I am who I should be or not, he _stays here_ with me.”

“Is that so?” Snow’s face begins to change, becoming a sneer she hasn’t seen since she was a child sticking her nose up at her teachers. A feeling clatters loudly in her chest, an old memory, an old anger.

She grasps onto it, baring her teeth. “He’s not leaving with you _, Snow White_.”

Surprise flutters briefly around Snow’s expression, but disappears soon after, becoming a quiet, muted displeasure. “No,” Snow frowns. “He isn’t.”

Rage flattens immediately into hope, gaping in her chest like a wound. “You’re staying here?” She asks, looking to Henry.

He doesn’t look straight at her, his eyes focused at the middle of her forehead, a tactic she taught him for his nerves in public speaking. _Just imagine your talking to a wall, dear,_ she had said _. Say what you need to and that’s all, then it’s all over._

“Henry.” She steps forward, her voice raw with the hope and fear in her throat, stuck in with her words. “Please look at me.”

His eyes flicker to hers in surprise. The space around her fills with quiet nervousness, shuffling feet and voices – Snow hums fretfully and David steps closer, as if to block her from him, but Emma steps in between, halting their action.

“Emma,” David warns warily, but doesn’t move with his daughter’s hand pressed against his chest.

“Just let her be.” Emma says.

Regina approaches carefully, moving to stand right in front of him. “Henry,” she whispers, and although he is too tall to direct his chin anywhere, anymore, her hand lifts anyway, traveling up the small distance to press hesitating fingers on his cheek.

She is aware of the wary twitch of his head and the cautious way he is watching her. But he does not move, and neither can she.

“I’m so sorry, darling.” she whispers and gently draws circles along top of his cheek. “I know how confusing this must feel. I can’t imagine how you must feel. I don’t even entirely know how to make of it myself.” Her thumb presses down, urging the immediacy of her words. “But no matter how strange this seems, no matter how many _years_ have passed, I want you to know that I – I still _love_ you. So much, my darling. And I would _never_ hurt you.”

Henry’s eyes flicker and she breathes in sharply, gently pressing down on the thumb along his cheek. “All I want is for us to be together again.” she breathes, wanting so much. “To be a family again. You, me, and Emma. Do you think we could do that?”

He stares at her for a long time before quietly stepping back again. Her hand flickers with surprise and falls heavily to her side. “I’ll be staying.” he says, and doesn’t look away from her. “But only so Emma isn’t here alone.”

“Henry.” Emma snaps, but Henry doesn’t flinch. He stares at Regina, the heart of a thirteen year in his chest, flashing, tightening, turning into a fist.

He turns to his grandparents. “I’ll walk you out,” he says, before stepping out onto the porch, his grandparents following close behind him. She watches him through the foggy glass window, walking evenly down the path and into the grey, evening light, not speaking, his head lifted and facing forward.

Emma brushes worriedly against her arm. “Regina?”

“I’m fine,” she says because suddenly she is too tired for comfort. Her chest aches, wanting, for a moment, the simple quiet that comes with sleep, the silence, the peace. Crossing her arms around her chest, she glances up at the dim rooms above the stairs. “If you don’t mind, dear, I think I’ll rest for a little while.”

“Okay,” Emma murmurs.

Regina turns and leaves. She can hear Emma’s footsteps following quietly behind before becoming hesitant, pausing, stopped on the first floor. Regina doesn’t look back, she simply continues up the remaining stairs to her room, gently closing the door behind her.

Her room still looks familiar. There is the oval mirror hanging on the wall and the slanted white windows, the filmy curtains tied to the side and the desk that still holds all of her belongings. It looks in the same exact state as it had been five years ago, preserved somehow. On the desk beside her bed is the wristwatch she had forgotten that morning, dropped carelessly the night before. It still works, ticking quietly even five years later, its thin silver hands chasing time.

As she sinks into bed, she rests her cheek on the pillow nearest to the window and listens to the distant hum of the traffic outside. There is an odd comfort to it, in the steady rhythm of cars passing, uninterrupted, through streets and intersections, returning, alive and well, to the families and homes waiting for them.

She closes her eyes, but doesn’t sleep.

*

It’s still early when she decides to leave bed, finally done pretending. By the silence in the hallway and below the stairs, she knows Henry is still asleep. She thinks briefly about Emma, whether she returned to her parents or if she is asleep in her house somewhere, if she lives here now.

At the stairway, she turns on a whim and peeks into the guestroom where she finds Emma in bed, the room still dark and quiet, her jeans on the floor and her belongings crowding the desk space.

“Oh, Emma.” She sighs and is already halfway to the bed before she’s completely aware of it.

She picks up a shirt from the floor and folds it over the back of a chair, sitting quietly on the corner of the desk to watch her sleep for a moment. There is something undeniably peaceful in her calm, even breathing, in the way the thin fingers in her hand curl into a fist, squished against her chest, how the usual lines in Emma’s face are smoothed out in her sleep and softened.

With a sigh, gently tucking away a few strands of her blonde hair, Regina thinks: _I will make up for it now_. The long years. The sadness, the loss. Her son and Emma. _Her family_. She will make up for it all, somehow.

Rising to her feet, she gently pulls the sheet up from where they’ve twisted around Emma’s legs and drapes it loosely around her shoulders.

“You sleep like a rock, my dear,” she chuckles lightly and delivers a soft kiss against the top of her head, unable to resist brushing the messy strands of blonde hair from her face to behind her ear. Emma hums and shifts closer. Quietly, Regina steps away, to let her sleep.

She doesn’t check on Henry. His sleep is far lighter than Emma’s and somehow, she knows that he would be waiting for this. For something suspicious. He’d be lying in bed like a mouse in the walls, listening closely, waiting for possibilities, for her to walk into his room uninvited.

It’s too early for breakfast, but her stomach grumbles (again) and she checks her fridge, sighing at the spacious, empty drawers. She couldn’t even make her family oatmeal if she wanted to. Turning away in disgust, she plucks the car keys from one of the hangers and strides purposefully to the garage.

A quiet hush falls around her and she stands in the doorway, breathing in the dark, damp air of the garage, faced with the two cars instead of one. One is familiar, at least, the bright yellow bug. But the other…is a truck, big and green and unfamiliar. It sits in the same space where her own car used to.

It makes sense, of course.

Henry would need a car of his own and whether Emma would be willing to hand over her bug or not, her family would not be able to sustain a single-car lifestyle.

It makes sense. But it also makes her think of her own car, lost somewhere on the bottom of the ocean, (the way her body had been, still strapped inside) waiting as time passed on and her son became old enough to drive.

Shivering, she steps out from the garage and quietly returns into the warmth of the hallway, her fingers trembling as she grabs her coat and scarf. On her way to the door, she sets the keys back on its hook, leaving without a word.

The morning is chilly, the sidewalk slick with rain and wet bundles of leaves. She passes along the narrow sidewalks, shivering gently – yet oddly grateful; there is a kind of alertness that comes with the cold, a pleasant certainty that she is alive and that the air clouding from her mouth is her breath, and it moves with her lungs, with a functioning, beating heart.

She doesn’t take much notice of the people around her, quietly passing by her like fish in streams of water, mindful of only their direction as she is mindful of her own, recalling favorite recipes and half-forgotten street names.

It isn’t until she is in the grocery store reviewing two different sausages that she feels the uneasy eyes of a stranger on her.

He is watching her from beneath his eyelids, his gaze flickering hesitantly from her face to her hands (familiar, perhaps, to the people who have known an empty space between their ribs), and she drops both packages in her cart and walks away, heart thrumming high and red in her ears.

Though it’s still early, the store is more populated than she thought it would be, morning joggers pausing for coffee, tired mothers hugging their children to their hip as they walk through the aisle, and her, pulling her scarf up from beneath her chin to hide from them all.

Her cart is heavy with ideas of breakfast and though she knows she won’t make it through the checkout line without being noticed (is that Ava? she's so much taller, now, Regina hardly recognizes her at all), she won’t return home empty handed. It’s still possible, she thinks, to have a normal morning. To have breakfast with her family.

In the back of the store, small cold offices sit with untouched papers and coffee in styrofoam cups, becoming stale. Closing the door, she sets the phone to her ear and quickly punches in the familiar number.

It rings three times before Emma answers breathlessly. “Yeah?”

Beneath the quiet hum of static, Regina can hear the high sweeping sound of distress in her voice and with a sudden jolt of guilt, she can imagine how the morning unraveled without her: Emma walking bare foot into her room to find an empty bed and a terrifying possibility – all the hope and relief closing inside of her like metal trap beneath the earth, closing shut.

“If this is a prank call I can pretty much _guarantee_ you this is not a good time.”

“Its not,” she breathes, guilt-heavy. “Though I suppose I do still owe you an apology.”

The pause lasts the amount of time it takes for Emma to steal a half-breath. “Oh my god,” she rasps, “ _Regina_ – do you have _any idea_ how this morning was like?”

“I should have left a note,” she sighs.

“Where _are_ you?”

“The store. The refrigerator was looking a little scarce, and I wanted to make breakfast,” she sits on the corner of the desk and sighs. “I’m sorry I frightened you. I just wanted the house stocked again. It isn’t always this empty, is it?”

Emma is still coming back, still catching her breath, but she’s heard the edge in her voice and it softens her own. “Um, no, not usually. I try to go shopping every week, but I mean, I can’t really cook that well and Henry tends to eat with his friends, but we’ve been…we’ve been really trying –”

“Oh, of course you have. I didn’t mean…” she sighs and starts again. “I just wanted to make you breakfast. You and Henry. That’s all I want. I planned to be back before you woke up.” Hesitating, she clears her throat. “Is Henry awake, too?”

“No, still asleep.”

Still asleep. “Good,” she sighs and tips her head back. She never thought mornings would ever feel like this again: made up of so many complications, so many knots; its work just to slip through one unharmed.

Remembering her situation, she glances out of the window. “By the way, dear.” she says. “I think I might be in a bit of a situation.”

The line briefly hums with static before Emma’s voice comes through with worry. “What kind of situation?”

“Well I didn’t think the store would be this busy in the morning.” A few people pass by the door and she frowns. “Or that I’d be noticed so quickly.”

“ _They’ve noticed you_?”

“Just a few suspicious looks,” she assures her. “It’s not a big deal, of course. I could probably go through the checkout line if Ava wasn’t the one behind the counter.” Her finger curls around the phone wire idly, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m just not sure what to expect. I don't know how anyone will react to seeing me again.”

“Yeah, let’s not take any risks,” Emma hedges uneasily. “Can you just – you know – poof away?”

“Oh, and just steal all this food?” Emma makes a quiet sound of understanding, but inside Regina stirs uneasily at the dry, hollow feeling, like silent, empty rooms in a large house.

“Well, let’s just forget about shopping for now, then. I’ll take care of it later, after work.”

“But Emma,” she frowns. “Breakfast.”

“Regina, I’m not putting you in danger for bacon and eggs.”

“But I…” Frustration wells, gripping her chest. “I won’t have anything to make you and Henry.”

“Breakfast will be just as nice tomorrow morning,” Emma says lightly, but Regina doesn’t answer. There is a quiet panic blooming between her ribs at the thought of an empty kitchen, at the quiet restlessness that will follow, the silence, the unease, her son’s dark eyes refusing to meet hers.  

“ _No_.” She strains. “We’re having breakfast together. You, me, and Henry.” She means to sound firm and unyielding, but her voice sticks, caught, and she wobbles, casting her eyes out across the office instead. At anything that can keep the wet and suffocating rasp from her voice – at the silent desks and piles of papers, at the cold coffee cups and the small windows.

“Regina?” Emma asks hesitantly, but she cannot answer. She stares at a small crack in the window until the squirming in her chest begins to quiet down again, ebbing away, allowing her to breathe.

After a while, Emma’s voice returns gently. “How about I drive over now, then? I’ll go through the check out and drive you home. We’ll get whatever you want. Does that – does that sound good?”

“Yes,” she sighs all at once.

“Okay,” Emma breathes, relieved. “Okay. See you soon.”

She remains in the office for a little while longer after Emma hangs up. She stares out at the small office window, watching people quietly pass by.

(There are a few people she recognizes – not many by name, but she can see them in the back of her mind, a younger image of them captured by moments just like this, passing quietly through stores and sidewalks, existing as she had at the time as someone alive).

They pass by her now, still alive, still busied by life but separated now by years she’s lost.

Without thinking, her hand lifts to press hesitantly against her chest to feel gently with the tips of her fingers the skin and bone beneath it. Against her palm, she feels the gentle beating of her heart, and though she knows it stopped at one point, it’s beating now, beating again, so she presses her hand more firmly against her chest (and thinks _please, please_ keep beating).

A few minutes pass before she catches Emma passing by the small window, oblivious, her long hair tossed up into a messy ponytail as she walks around with her hands shoved into the front of her jean pockets, scanning the aisles as subtly as a Charming can.

Popping open the door, she pokes her head out. “ _Emma._ ”

Emma pauses and glanced around obliviously.

 _“_ Emma.” she hisses, and then sighs when she goes on unnoticed. Leaning out further, she says, _“I''m over here, you idiot._

Emma twists around to find her, smiling immediately. Quickly, she slides into the cool office, bumping elbows and limbs, her boots knocking clumsily against the door to close it behind them.

“Hey,” she whispers.

“Hello.” Regina returns, mildly disoriented by how little space there is between them now. Emma’s cheeks are still pink and her lips look dry and cracked but she’s smiling still, smiling widely.

Emma glances at her cart, “Oh, wow,” she chuckles. “Craving meat, Regina?”

Blinking, she looks down at her cart, only now recognizing just how heavy it is, so little with her usual choices, the salads and fruits and yogurts. “Oh. Right.” She clears her throat and tosses away the sudden discomfort. “I assume you’re still a ravenous carnivore.”

“Absolutely.”

Regina smiles, “Well good. I’ll have to make something special for dinner, too.”

Emma glances back down to her cart, “What are you gonna make?”

She has a list of Emma’s favorite foods in mind, but Henry’s picky appetite halves it. “Biscuits and gravy?” she asks, smiling gently when excitement jumps in the hard lines around Emma’s smile.

“Really?” Emma exclaims happily, “I haven’t had that in _forever_.”

“So it’s still your favorite?” Regina asks carefully.

“Oh yeah.” Emma smiles and gently brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear, “Just about anything you cook is my favorite.”

Her chest fills with warmth. “At least somethings haven’t changed.” Regina smiles.

The reminder of the years that have passed steals some of the simple happiness, but the smile on Emma’s face doesn’t slip away and it is not entirely unpleasant to know that the years that went on without her won’t simply be ignored. She still has a chance to catch up on them.  

“So I’ll just…” Emma reaches for the cart, transferring the weight between their fingers. “The line doesn’t look long, I should be done pretty quick. Do you wanna….” Her face scrunches up. “Wait in the car I guess?”

“Oh.”

“If you don’t want to that’s fine, you could totally drive home. I don’t mind walking -”

“Emma, honestly,” she sighs. “It’s below freezing.”

“You walked here.”

“Well, I have a scarf, don’t I?”

“I don’t mind, really.”

“Emma, the _keys._ ”

“Right.” Wiggling them out of her pocket, her keys jangle loudly with the clutter of pictures and keychains and spare keys and Regina holds them tight as she slip out of the door and into the small crowds of people.

As she passes the mothers and the children and the early joggers, she allows herself to focus on the pictures instead – Emma’s life, all strung together on a keychain and carried in her pocket everywhere she goes. Regina thumbs an old picture of her (some odd stolen moment preserved between paper and glass, worn and weary over the years, still attached after all this time) and slips quietly out of the door, unnoticed.

*

Emma comes out only a few minutes later, her face scrunched up from the cold and her figure fogged by the window, but she smiles when she steps in, bags sitting heavily in the back while she flicks through the few fuzzy stations on the radio. She eventually sets it to the one clear station, playing 80’s music in a constant stream.

Emma hums the whole way back, tapping her thumbs on the wheel as she drives. Regina sits beside her, feeling present, watching Emma’s usually sharp face soften with her smile, glancing over every now and then to sing the words badly (oh so badly, but it’s being sung).

She can’t help but wish she was still in that car, still on her way home to the sense of possibility that had captured her on the road. That Henry would sit with her as he often did and they would talk over the lost years, all of his grief and doubts. It seemed possible.

But when she walked in, Henry slunk out of the kitchen where he sits now, sorting through papers and school books while she hesitates near the narrow doorway, waiting with tightness in her throat and words stuck against the roof of her mouth.

It’s difficult not to sneak up the stairs to where Emma is, still showering, where a simple knock would have her leaving early to be whatever she needs her to be: the aid, her support, a shoulder to lean on. She would help with this, too. She’d do it without hesitation, but there are knots in her throat and they keep her in the doorway, waiting for a moment with her son.

She watches from the frame as Henry lifts to his feet, quickly zipping up his backpack and sliding it over his broad shoulders.

As he turns from the couch, he finds her and halts, startled. Slowly, he frowns. “Why are you staring at me?”

She slips from the door frame to walk closer, resisting the urge to close her arms around her chest for fear of seeming defensive. “I made you some breakfast, dear.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“It’s your favorite.”

Henry, despite everything, cranes his neck a little to see past the marble counters to the steaming plates and deep saucepans. There is a moment, she thinks, that is almost like the one she imagined so she pushes for it, mustering up a small smile. “I thought we could have breakfast together.”

He glances at her. “I’m already on my way out.”

She looks back to the old clock behind her, its hands chasing numbers. “It’s only 7:15.”

“It’s not a school day.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Out.” he shrugs his big shoulders with frustration, not looking at her. “I don’t have to ask for your permission.”

“Henry.” she doesn’t walk after him, but her voice feels halting her throat, her feet anchored by the heavy beating of her heart. “Will you please just – will you just give me a chance?”

Henry is still turned away from her, but he remains still, his shoulders stiff, but waiting for her in a way that reminds her of when he was an infant, crying in great, frightening spasms with a kind of ferocity that seemed endless until, suddenly, wrinkling a kiss against his cheek, he was silent.

Slowly, she walks closer, facing him. “How can I help you with this, darling?” she says, watching the smooth planes of his forehead move in a small nervous twitch. “How can I make you see me again?”

“I don’t know.” he says, and though his voice is hard, his fingers curl nervously around the straps on his shoulders. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I’m your mother.” she says, and the rest of her clear, cohesive explanation gets lost in her thin, watery voice.

His face clouds and he looks out across the room, his fingers absently running along that thin thread-bare strap on his shoulder. “I don’t know what you expect me to do.” he says at last, still not looking at her. “I mean. Things like this just don’t happen. People can’t just come _back_. I don’t know how you expect me to believe this.”

“I know dear. I can’t imagine how difficult this must be. I know how impossible it feels.” she nearly steps closer, but remembers in time the way distance speaks, to let her son breathe. “I’ve spent years of my life searching for ways around constraints in my magic and I have never once seen anything like this. Not even with Daniel.”

Henry’s eyes snap to hers. She can see the recognition, remembering that day in the stable, the frightened humming-bird heart in his chest and the smell of straw. Daniel’s looming, terrifying form. It’s the first time he’s really looked at her since she touched his cheek, his attention wells a kind of hopefulness in her.

“I can’t explain this in terms of magic, but maybe we can still make sense of this in some way.”

“And how should I make sense of this?”

Somewhere beating beneath his chest is the heart of the Truest Believer, and so she leaps, hoping some of that might faith might linger beneath, like a net. “Well, I think it might be a second chance. It seems to be. Or at least something like it.” she clears her throat, crossing her arms around her chest. “It must be, if I am here again. To be with you, and Emma.”

“A second chance?” Henry’s expression is unreadable until he speaks again, the curve of his mouth lifting into something hard and amused. “Uh yeah. Sorry, I don’t think so.”

“Why?” She asks uncertainly.

“You don’t know my mom very well if you think she’d get a chance like this.”

She stands there, staring, feeling suddenly hollow. Scraped empty like a seashell. “You don’t think she deserves one?” she asks quietly.

“No, I didn’t say that.” Henry frowns at her. “I just – whether or not she deserves it has nothing to do with it.”

“And why not?” she snaps, a dry anger rolling off her tongue. “What makes a second chance so impossible, then?”

“Because she got hit by a truck _.”_ His voice is sharp and definitive, as if each word hit the back of his teeth on its way out, falling out sharp and chipped. “On her way back from work. From some stupid careless accident – a guy looking over his shoulder at the wrong time. A stupid accident after years of doing all she could do to be better. All her sacrifice, all her work and she just drowns in her own goddamn _car_.”

She feels the large empty space in her ribs, the crushing weight of all the things she wants to say, how to explain – but how when life has always felt frighteningly like a train on a railroad track, rushing, screeching, pushing her forward only to crash, right on course. She doesn’t know how, she doesn’t understand it herself, so she remains quiet. She watches Henry instead.

His breaths come out in sharp, uneven puffs. “Yeah, so sorry, but I just can’t believe that. I don’t think those kinds of things just happen. Not for my Mom at least.”

Henry turns away from her then, walking toward the door and while she wants him to stay, her words are lost somewhere in her throat, so she remains in the entryway, watching silently as he slips through the door and out into the walk away, disappearing out of sight.

For a while, she just waits. She can hear the house all around her, the familiar ticking of the clock, a branch tapping against the window, the silence. She doesn’t know how long she stands there, waiting, listening, but it isn’t until she hears the quiet creaking of the floorboards above her that she allows herself to leave the entry way. Quietly, she slips into the warm glow of the kitchen.

Sitting silently at the table, she waits for Emma.

“There you are.” Emma breathes, and slides into the kitchen light, “Where’s the kid?”

“He left.”

“Left?” Emma frowns deeply and smacks a hand along her empty pockets, searching for her phone. “Damn it. I’ll call him back. He’ll be here –”

“No,” she sighs. “It’s fine.”

Emma blinks at her. “You don’t want me to call him back?”

“No. No. Just let him be.” she says, and waits for the ache: for Henry’s disbelief to harm in some way. But all she feels is a kind of certainty, like steady streams of traffic moving forward, humming in her mind because even though everything is different and difficult, Henry is not. The years have failed to make him a stranger to her.

It is enough, she thinks. To understand her son again. She will learn to understand the rest.

“So…” Regina glances up to find Emma still standing by the door, now shy in the silence. “Are – are we still going to have breakfast?”

“Well, if you don’t mind me as your only company.” Regina smiles and enjoys the way Emma’s smile crinkles her face into familiar lines.

“I’ll get you a plate.”

The morning light is warm on her back as Regina waits at the table, watching Emma move through the kitchen in a thin, easy grace. She is in long sleeves and bare feet, her hair still wet from the shower.

Somehow, the morning feels normal regardless of everything. Emma sneaks bites of food on both their plates and sips her coffee loudly. Sometime while eating, she scoots her chair even closer to Regina’s. Regina smiles and pretends not to notice.

It isn’t until they have both finished that Emma speaks again, a cup of coffee cradled against her chin. “I don’t know if I should go to work.”

Regina hums, half dozing in the warm sun. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

She purses her lips. “I’m not a stray cat, dear. I know how to stay put in a house.”

“Yeah I know that, Regina.” Emma sighs and leans forward, setting her cup back on the tabletop; a napkin flutters gently from the movement and her fingers trap it down at a corner. “I just don’t like the thought of you being here alone.”

Well. She can’t argue with that. She doesn’t like it either.

Regina waits in the quiet, watching the tip of Emma’s finger trace the patterns in the napkin, the soft red circles and the dotting lines. After a while, her voice creeps in hesitantly. “What if you came to work with me?”

“Emma,” she sighs.

“It could work, I mean – it’s only me and David there all day.” Emma tilts her head and looks at her from the side. “ _And_ he already knows you’re here.”

“That doesn’t mean he wants me there, my dear.”

“Well I want you there.” Emma nudges her with her knee. “Come on, I really don’t want to leave you here.”

It really only takes a few seconds before she feels herself give, sighing. “Alright.”

“Really?” Emma grins.

“Yes.” She sighs, but she is warmed by Emma’s smile. It loosens something in her chest.

*

The office is quiet when Emma walks in. Regina waits momentarily by the door, watching Emma as she looks around the room, looking for her father. It’s mostly empty, the desks dark and silent in their set rows, papers fluttering beneath paperweights as a cool breeze moves the air around the room. In the far corner, she recognizes David with his straight back and large shoulders, staring tiredly at the coffee pot, rubbing the sleep from his face as he waits for it to brew.

Emma clears her throat. “Uh, hey dad.”

“Hey kiddo,” he sighs before even turning around, smiling over his shoulder. “How was your night.” His eyes stray momentarily to the back where she stands, tall and straight in her dark jacket and heels. “ _Shit_.” He jumps back, fingers jumping to his waist to feel his gun holster.

“Whoa, Dad.” Emma’s walking forward, hands splayed out in front of her. “Can we not grab the gun so early in the morning?”

“What the hell, Emma?” His hand drops from his holster, but his expression doesn’t change. There is something about his eyes that pricks an unpleasant feeling in her stomach. There is fear in it, understandably she supposes, but also disgust like the way her son looked at spiders crawling up his wall, waiting for her careful hands to trap them and take them away again. “What in the world is she doing here?”

“I wanted her here.” Emma sets her wallet and keys on the desk, sliding her jacket onto the back of the chair. There is a kind of sly certainty in her as she waits for an argument and pretends like she isn’t.

“I’m not going to fight you on how you should feel. I don’t want to.” David crosses his arms squarely across his chest. “But you can’t just – bring danger into everyone else’s lives, alright kid? You just gotta be more _cautious_ about this.”

 _“Cautious?”_ Emma laughs with the kind of exasperation that makes her face hard and sharp. “What do you think is going to happen? Is she going to eat my _brains_?”

Regina shifts uneasily and glances back across the far hallway. For once, the large and empty house seems welcoming. She wonders if it’s too late.

“Is that so ridiculous, Emma? She came back from the dead.”

“Right, and so obviously she’s just waiting to smash my head in, right now, huh?”

“I don’t know.” David gruffs.

“No, you don’t know, so maybe stop trying to give me some lessons through your enormous knowledge of low-budget zombie movies.”

David locks up, his jaw tightening, but it’s only a moment before he seems to deflate, shying away from a standoff with his daughter. “Fine.” He sighs. “If she’s staying, then she sits in the cell.”

“ _Dad!_ ”

“In the cell or she doesn’t stay.” David only wavers a little by the ferocity in his daughter’s eyes, ducking his head a little to accept the new weight and heft of his daughter’s anger. It is the one thing she is willing to grant in his favor: the way his daughter’s disappointment wounds him. But he still nods his head to where the cell is. “It’s the only way I’m letting it happen, kiddo. If she tries anything, I’m not going to be taken unprepared.”

Emma opens her mouth to say something– or perhaps to start yelling – but she interrupts.

“Its fine, dear,” Regina brushes a gentle hand on Emma’s arm as she passes with a prick of contempt, she glances to David. “Anyway, what’s a few bars for the _living dead_.”

David blinks and shifts away as she passes, catching the weary yet warm smile on Emma’s face; she rolls her eyes when she winks.

The cell is small and empty except for the mattress pressing up against the wall. Light tilts in from the window above and rested in long rectangles along the bedspread, flickering briefly with leaf shadows and other quick, passing things. Regina sits gingerly, the sunlight resting warm against the side of her face and along her neck.

She hears David murmur, “Here are the keys.”

“I’m not locking the door,” Emma hisses back and Regina looks away so she doesn’t have to see what happens next, glancing across the office instead. It’s still familiar with its slick garish floor and reddish gray brick. There is a fan whirring quietly above them, flickering the pages; beside the cell is a small desk where a stack of magazines are, an old battered coffee can filled with spry white daisies sitting atop it.

Emma’s steps are quiet as she approaches. “You want anything to read?” she asks quietly, nodding to the magazines. She’s holding the keys limply with her fingers.

“No,” But Regina stops, and says after a beat, “Actually, is there a _Journal_ in there _?”_

Emma slips by, flipping quickly. “Yeah. Old one, though.” She holds out her hand and Emma smiles, passing it over. “Never figured you for the Home reading, sorts.”

“I enjoy their recipes.” She says without glancing up, she asks, “Are you going to lock the door?” Her voice is unintentionally soft and it sways Emma to a stop.

Her fingers fiddle with the keys, turning the large metal ring that holds them all together. “I don’t want to.” she mumbles.

“Well it makes no difference to me,” she tries to sound light and casual, but the wall is cold and the mattress is stiff and it’s been years since she’s been thought of as the enemy. It is rattling, despite everything.

Emma must sense the lie because when she closes the door and slips the key in, she imitates the click with her tongue before sliding the key back into her pocket and walking to her desk. Regina doesn’t look up from her magazine, but she feels it all the same, the brightening, warming her chest in the same way the sunlight does, resting against the curve of her neck.

*

In the end, it is not entirely unpleasant to simply rest. The sun is steady and warm and she feels comfortable enough to almost forget about the odd circumstances surrounding her, allowing her to rest against the wall and watch her surroundings: the odd tap of the tree branch against the window, the odd click of fingers on a keyboard, the way Emma shifts restlessly in her chair, glancing occasionally over her shoulder to watch her in pauses of her work.

David is less subtle in his watch of her – he glowers over his coffee whenever Emma shifts towards her again.

It’s mostly silent. There are the small, incidental sounds, the answered phone calls, and the click of the receiver, paper shifting, dry yawns and cracks in the small bones along the spine, spent from the long hours. Regina doesn’t remember the years that passed without her but there is something about the possibility of its absence that make these quiet familiar sounds seem all that more important to her.

It’s a little while later when David stands stiffly and mumbles a quiet excuse as he walks towards the door. Emma waits for the door to close before turning around in her chair to face her.

“Hey,” she smiles.

“Hello,” Regina smiles faintly. “You know, you are far more efficient than I remember you to be.” Emma cocks an eyebrow at her and she makes a small pass of her hand. “I don’t see a single paper airplane in this place, and it’s been at least four hours.”

“Oh yeah.” she grins and leans on her elbows. “But to be fair, by now we usually half-way through one of those games over there.” she nods over to the drawer with a grin.

“Of course.”

Emma glances at the drawer, and then at her, smiling slowly. “You wanna play a game of cards?”

“I don’t know much about them.”

“You’d know this one,” she says, already sliding her chair back to her desk, opening up a drawer. “Henry was the one that taught me. He said you knew it.”

“Ah,” Regina sighs, remembering. “Yes.”

A life can seem so incredibly long and yet so short. It seems only a year ago that she was dragging a small desk between her and Henry to play the only card game she knew. She’d watch him then, his quick smile and excited, eager gains along with his wide, avid eyes flipping through his deck, looking for victory.

But it is Emma now, years later, pulling a deck of cards from a drawer and shuffling the battered, bent cards as she walks to her cell. She kicks off her shoes and slides into bed with her, sitting cross-legged as though they had always been this way, this easy around each other and it urges Regina to meet her in some way, to force comfort into their new lives, to toe off her heels and tuck her legs behind her and feel the sun warm her bare toes.

A tentative happiness flickers inside of her and she lets it grow, leaning on her hand she watches Emma split the deck with quick, practiced hands, gathering the cards as they lie out in front of her.

It’s a few quick games (Emma playing recklessly and losing badly) before Regina decides to speak again.

“So.” Regina starts.

“So?”

She glances up at Emma, at her even brow and her set mouth, flipping carefully through her cards. “I would like to know more about the last five years.”

“Oh.” Emma’s mouth turns hesitant. “Um, well alright. What would you like to know?”

Regina follows the corner of the card with her finger, bending it easily back and forth. She’s not sure. There is so much to know – so many years, so many days and moments that go on in her absence. They extend like the sky above her and she struggles to focus on one single detail, thinking of Henry and the maps and pictures in his room, the thick books along his wall. She thinks of Emma and her long sighs, her sad sweet smiles, eyes that still follow her everywhere.

“Well,” she straightens the card again, tries to make her tone smooth. “I haven’t seen Hook lurking in any of your doorways in a while.”

“Hook? _That’s_ your first question?”

“I have quite a few years to catch up on if you recall, _Emma_.” she huffs and haughtily collects her cards but there is a small flutter of embarrassment in her chest. She can feel the top of her cheeks burn warm. “You seemed to love him, last I remember.”

“Did I?” Emma asks absently, still looking at her cards. “I guess I did. I don’t really know anymore. It’s been a while since it ended, and I haven’t thought of it since.”

“When?”

Her mouth pinches at the corner. “Close to five years.” Regina watches Emma’s eyes become more dimmed, remembering, “I don’t know. It would have hurt more if I loved him, right? You’d think about it more. You’d start missing them, all the little things. Their little habits and mannerisms. What they do when they think they're not looking. All the time you spent together.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.” Her thumb idly bends the worn, fuzzy edge of the card. “I thought I was okay spending the rest of my life with him, but I think I could have said goodbye to him on our first date and felt no different.” Emma smiles dimly, her eyes fluttering up with a wry exhaustion. “I don’t think I ever found a way to say goodbye to you.”

Her heart thunders in her ears and Emma’s face tightens, eyes falling away. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” she assures breathlessly, but her mouth fills with all the wonder she has for Emma’s devotion to her. And while she wants to ask, her words are stuck inside of her like the heart behind her ribs, beating brashly like the waves against the cliffs, always wondering.

“What’s the next question?” Emma asks, looking away from her.

“Why did you never move into my room?”

Emma’s face registers the question like a slap and Regina nearly takes it all back. But she thinks of Emma in the guestroom, curled up like a mouse in the wall as her room remains closed, still filled with all of her belongings. With the jewelry box and that silver wrist watch she forgot that morning, still full of the details of her life but motionless, interrupted by grief. Sealed by a closed door.

“I don’t know.” Emma says but her voice is scraped clear like dead leaves, “I guess I just didn’t want to move you out of your own room. It didn’t feel right to put you in boxes and set you away in the basement with the rest of Henry’s childhood. Like you were some part of the past now, just because you were dead.” Her voice breaks away suddenly and she shakes her head, huffing out a sharp laugh. “God, I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” She soothes, the lilt in her voice carrying both the smile on her face and the sorrow. “I was the one who wanted to know.”

“And I want to tell you.” Emma warily wipes a blonde curl from her face. “But I haven’t exactly gotten any better at having difficult talks. Henry just about suffered through every pep talk I ever made”

“What pep talks?” Leaning forward, she smiles; she remembers only the childhood talks, the math homework and the difficulty with friends - she can’t imagine any now since he’s crossed into adulthood.

“Just normal stuff.” Emma’s tone tells her otherwise and Regina decides not to press, her heart shying away from the possibility of sharp jolting truth. “He ended up taking over most of the pep talks over time, though. He got pretty good at it, too. I think he stole just about half of what you used to tell him though. I could practically hear your voice in all the talks he gave me when he thought I was being too sulky.”

Warmth blurs in her eyes, furrowing her vision. She smiles. “Did it help at all?”

“Yeah,” Emma chuckles wetly and lightly rubs her forehead. “It did, a little. He got your tone down to an art. My job was just to listen.” She smiles watery, the soft creases around her eyes wet with tears. “We made a good team out of it, I guess – trying to fit you back in the house.” Emma looks down at her hands suddenly, her chin quivering.

But Regina captures her chin, gently lifting Emma back to her. She looks carefully over her watery grey eyes and tight cheeks, every part of her trying to hide the urge to cry.

Brushing a thumb along her cheek, she swells, so full suddenly of relief. “I’m so glad you had each other.” She whispers, and as Emma smiles tremulously, she rubs a thumb along the peeks of her cheeks, pressing all of her love and relief into the brimming pink in her skin. “I’m so glad.” she sighs.

They stay like that for a little while, the bed warm with the late afternoon, Emma’s long blonde hairs tickling her wrist as her fingers repeat their small routine, pushing strands from Emma’s face, thumbing the strong curve of her cheekbone and new creases around her eyes. There is an old yearning lifting inside of her like smoke, closing her throat.

After a while, Regina slides her hand away, her fingers curling into a fist at her side as she gently clears the soreness from her throat. “Are we going to continue the game, dear?”

Emma slowly opens her eyes again, blinking slowly, and then again, as if only now waking up. “Sure.," she shifts and straightens up a bit, smiling when her shoulders pop with their stiff joints, “You wanna continue this one or get another?”

“Well,” Regina smiles down at her pile of cards. “I suppose I am rather bored of winning.”

“ _Hey there_ , I got close a few times, if you remember.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“You’re a liar, because I totally _did_.”

“Do you want to keep playing, then?” She suggests slyly, smiling with delight when Emma huffs. “No really, dear, I want to see you prove yourself.”

“You know, this gloating is just gonna come back and bite you in the butt.” Emma huffs and leans over to rake up all the cards, shuffling them again. “Just watch.”

It’s as she’s passing out cards again when the door clatters open, the sound of rushing feet filling the room. “ _Emma._ ”

Regina straightens immediately, watching as a head of dark hair comes tumbling into the cell and onto Emma’s lap, sharp angles and jabbing elbows as Emma yelps, struggling to hold on. “Jesus, Neal. A little warning.”

He finally settles onto her lap, bony back pressing firmly against her front as her arms cross gently around his chest. Regina can’t look away from him, her heart thumping heavily against her ribs; with his dark hair and brown eyes, he could have been Henry twelve years ago, still just a boy.

“Hey, so uh…” Emma’s chin rest against his shoulder, her cheek brushing gently against his. “You might not remember this lady, but she knew you when you were just a little a baby.”

Neal turns to look at her and she dizzily remembers the night she had rescued him from Zelena, so long ago. She had paced the small hallway in Granny’s with him against her chest, his exhausted parents waiting for an absent Emma to return as she rubbed his back, his frightened cries slowly quieting into a hushed kind of distress, still frightened, but becoming reassured. He had fallen asleep there, warm against her neck.

“Hello,” she smiles weakly and reaches for his hand. “You’ve grown so much.”

He glances down at her hand and turns shyly back to his sister, hiding beneath her chin. Emma chuckles warmly, hugging him closer.

“Oh, you goof,” she murmurs and drops a kiss on the top of his head. As Regina watches her, she feels a sharp, sudden yearning in her chest, aching simply with the sight of Emma with a small child.

“Neal – I said don’t run ahead.” Snow’s voice skitters anxiously through the hall and Emma blinks, startled, turning to face the door just as it opens. “I know you’re excited but you –” she halts, face instantly registering, responding. “What is _she_ doing here?”

“Mom.” Emma sighs.

Snow flicks her hand, refusing excuses as she stalks closer. “Come here, Neal.” Blinking, Neal glances up at his sister before he tumbles out, huddling up to his mother’s side. Her hand grasps him by the shoulder once he’s close enough, pressing him sharply behind her.

“Look, Mom.” Emma starts again.

“I don’t want to hear it.” Snow snaps, boring her fury into her. “I don’t even know what to say to you – you’ve just _endangered_ your little brother.”

Emma sinks limply back onto the mattress and Regina rubs her back with the flat of her palm because even five years later Snow still has issues with choosing one child over the other. Snow darkens over the exchange, seething silently until Neal muffles his hurt into her side and her hand releases immediately.

“What is she doing here?” Snow says again.

Emma sighs, “I wanted her here. I wasn’t going to just leave her alone in the house.” Her mouth twists nastily. “And anyway, I thought you wanted her in the cell.”

“You can quit making me seem like the enemy, Emma.” Snow sighs, a long exasperated sigh. “You aren’t seeing things clearly. You could be a little more cautious, for your brother’s sake, at least.”

Emma opens her mouth, but she is interrupted suddenly by the short trill of the phone. Regina can be relieved, seeing the conversation end and Emma lifting awkwardly to her feet, slipping through the cell doors to pick up the phone.

There is a quiet buzz, the voice beneath it speaking quickly before the taught brow of Emma’s forehead crinkles and she’s swept into movement, hanging up the phone, grabbing her keys and gun, holstering it quickly.

“Who was it?” Snow hedges anxiously.

“David.” Emma slides her jacket over her arms, speaking through urgent movement. “Someone called him over – said they saw a man running around in the forest. Needs back up now.”

“Is your father alright?” Snow follows urgently. “Did he sound alright?”

“Mom, yeah –I gotta go, though.” Emma’s nearly through the door before she’s skittering to a stop, fingers frantically clearing the blonde hair from her face. “Regina, stay here – please.” And then she’s out of the door, Snow rushing after her with worry.

Neal stands gawkily in the remaining silence, his mother’s steps echoing distantly down the hall. He has the gaping, frightened look of a child left behind. Regina pulls in another breath _because stupid thoughtless Snow_ before making herself sit down again, to rescue any of the normalcy he’d burst into only minutes later.

Neal glances anxiously around before looking at her, shyly. After a moment, he slides back into the cell and nervously sat on the edge of the bed with her. She watches him curiously, watches the small, even lift of his shoulders as he breathes, staring out into the calm office as they sit side by side, his hands in his lap.

It’s only a moment later before he glances over her again.

“You’re the woman in the picture,” he says.

Regina blinks and tilts her head in question, but an explanation never comes. He sits there watching her with large dark eyes, scrutinizing her carefully. It is only after a moment when he was finished with his thoughts that he nods, smiling shyly. In one movement, he lifts up onto his knees and throws his arms around her.

She’s startled for only a moment before her chest expands and she is returning his hug, her hands rubbing up and down his back. He squeezes his arms tight around her. “I’m glad you’re not lost anymore.”

Her hands halt. “What do you mean, dear?” she asks softly.

He pulls back, resting on the back of his legs. “Mom said we lost you,” he says, his arms still lank around her shoulders. “I’m glad you found your way back.”

A spasm of emotion takes her suddenly, starting as a heat at the back of her eyes, furring her vision. “Sweet boy,” she whispers and gently sweeps her fingers over his forehead, pushing back his hair (it falls like Henry’s did, so long and dark). “I’m glad I’m back too.”

Neal nods and squeezes her into a quick hug again. She barely has time to lift her arms before he is already squirming away t with an ecstatic exclaim “Mom!”

He bounds into her legs, but she doesn’t even budge. Snow is staring at Regina with wide eyes (it’s with surprise and something else, something wild and needy and hopeful).

“Snow,” Regina sighs and starts to stand.

Snow’s face changes swiftly, falling into the mask she once wore for an entire year – as the girl Regina watched through her mirror. Who stole, fought and evaded her guards, who defied her, slept on the ground. Who made that large empty room in her castle feel vast and cold and empty. A feeling Regina mistook for victory.

That girl stands in front of her now, blocking the door where Emma left. “You’re not leaving,” Snow snaps, “I don’t care who you convince here. You’re not Regina."

“But I am, dear.” Regina says and steps out of the cell, gently closing it behind her. "You know I am."

“Regina drowned. We buried her.” Snow snaps, stepping back from her. “You can’t come back from that.”

Regina feels the urge to repeat the same speech she gave to Henry. But she knows it wouldn’t be the same. Snow, in her loss, is a child with a dead mother, wanting to change the world into something she can fit into her own hands. Into something that makes sense to her. And right now, Snow is looking at her like she’s something harmful, something poisonous – a dangerous, ravenous spider.

“I won’t hurt you, dear.” Regina says, but it is to a blank wall, Snow’s hardened angry face.

“That’s just because the gun is gone.” Snow snaps and presses Neal closer against her. He watches worriedly, eyes wide. Quietly, he tugs on his mother’s hand. “What?” she snaps edgily, looking down at her son.

“She’s on our wall, Mom.”

Snow turns away from him, pulling a sharp, shaky breaths. “No, she isn’t.” But her eyes glimmer still, and Regina isn’t sure if it’s fear or doubt or something in between, and Regina doesn’t have the energy to decipher which. Walking towards the door, Regina only has to wait a moment for Snow’s fight to give, softening her spine. She wobbles to the side, glaring at her warily as Regina passes through the door and into the hall, feeling Snow’s eyes on her the entire way through.

Walking into the cold bright light, the door clicking closed after her, leaving Snow behind.

*

It doesn’t take long to find them.

Through the large crowd, she finds David first. His face is the only thing visible to her in the swell of the people gathering around them, shuffling, voices rising and falling, worry rushing all around them.

People gathered closer together, and through their shoulders she can see Emma, standing tall and halting with her shoulders pulled back stiffly, causing Regina to walk a little quicker.

And Emma – stupid, idiotic, Emma – is facing whatever David is looking at, whatever is making him _afraid_ , and so why is she only standing there _staring_?

She doesn’t understand until she’s reached the crowd, bumping shoulders with others, struggling her way through until Emma’s face is clear and shaken and her fingers are trembling on the back of her belt where her gun is, staring at someone, but her fingers are still just twitching around the handle, not grabbing it, and _why_ isn’t she grabbing it –

Emma yelps and Regina straightens to see what had been shouldered from her view before. The man Emma is staring at – his chest broad and bare and familiar like his hands now covering Emma’s jaw, cradling it like it’s something precious, and it doesn’t make sense, not until he lifts his head and she sees what Emma sees –

Graham. Dark, tall, handsome Graham.

And covered in blood.

His eyes are dark and unclear, glancing from all the sharp points in Emma’s face to the unfamiliar around him, the people, the motion, the tension, furring in and out until – until they find hers – then they sharpen, clearing; he steps away, letting go of Emma to face her completely.

Something jolts in Regina’s stomach, strange and foreign to her until the moment Graham steps into view because his mouth is dark with blood and his hands are large and red and there is the smell of flesh on him. It is raw and wet, underneath his fingernails and stuck in between his teeth. It is around his mouth, dripping down his fingers, and it excites her, remembering something similar (something like hunger).

When Graham steps forward, she does too, ready to meet him.

He breaks into a run.

*

The excitement only lasts a moment.

It lasts the time for Graham’s bare feet to hit the rough asphalt of the street, for his anger and fear rattling inside of him the way a train does in a station, screeching along metal. It lasts long enough for Emma to realize where Graham is heading, for the people around Regina to scatter fearfully away, leaving only her. And Emma.

And _Emma_ – stupid, foolish Emma – is quicker. It takes her only a moment to start running, arms pumping wildly, feet steady, body quick and agile as she pivots herself between them.

It’s a quick switch from the high sweeping exhilaration to the kind of terror she once reserved for only her son; it rattles wildly in her now as she feels Emma’s back bump into her, her body a shield, taking the strength and anger of Graham’s grip as it wraps around her throat.

The sudden fear sends her a step back, as Regina watched the dark curve of his fingertips dig into Emma’s neck, the quiet sound of pain stuck in her throat.

Magic tickles up her spine as she watches Emma’s body twitch and Regina barges forward, baring her teeth.

“Don’t _touch_ her,” she snarls and Graham’s dark, dim eyes only flicker to her for a moment before he’s flung back with just a flick of her hand.

His head hits the cement hard, making a sick, solid sound before the momentum sends him tumbling across the sidewalk.

“Oh god.” Emma gasps with wide eyes, and then looks at her. “Oh my god,” she repeats, startled, her fingers hesitantly touching the marks on her throat.

Regina’s fingers find them too. “Oh, Emma,” she sighs fretfully. “You complete and utter _moron_ , what were you thinking?”

“I’m alright,” she says with a quick jerk of her head, swallowing hard. It looks like it hurts. “Think – think he’s just really confused.”

“Is he.” Her lips purse with a dry anger.

“I don’t – I don’t think he knows the curse broke.”

It’s not an accusation, but the guilt finds her anyway. Regina’s thumb circles a dark mark on Emma’s throat before slipping away, smoothing down the collar of her shirt.

“Well, he’s probably fine.” Weariness creeps over her as she glances at him, “And covered in blood.”

Emma doesn’t answer. She is looking at something just over her shoulder with wide, dark eyes. Her fingers drop from her neck to curl painfully tight around Regina’s arm.

“Hey,” she starts, but Emma is already pushing her gently behind her. There, above Emma’s shoulder she can see where people have started to gather in edgy, huddled groups, as silent and dark ad houses are at night. Some are still returning into the scene, something heavy in hand – something to hit with.

There is a man closer than others, and though he doesn’t look familiar, she recognizes the look. The fear. There is a bat in his hands, his grip whitening his knuckles.

“Alright, alright.” Emma’s voice quakes as she holds her hands up in a kind of surrender. “Just – calm down, now.”

“Calm down?” The man asks, his voice high and clear, “That boy over there is covered in blood. You think we don’t know who he is? _What_ he is?” His eyes flicker, boring into her. “What _she_ is?”

“We don’t know anything yet.” Emma’s words are trampled under the hard heel of the bat as it lifts to rest against his shoulder. He starts forward. “Hey, hey – _hey_!” Emma exclaims frantically, stepping forward and slapping her hands hard against his chest. “ _We don’t know anything yet_!”

“That blood came from someone!” He yells and pushes hard enough for Emma to stumble back a step, losing balance.

Regina steps forward in a thoughtless spasm of fear, hoping only to catch some part of Emma’s body, an elbow or arm, anything to keep Emma’s body from hitting the cement. What she catches instead is the hard swing of the bat against her head.

It’s like a door slamming shut – like Henry, ten years old, running up the stairs to avoid her, the door swinging shut, the walls rattling with its force.

Then everything goes dark.

*

She wakes in a room unfamiliar to her. It is small with windows on two sides, one facing the faint, darkening line of the buildings outside and the other to the sea, a distant blurry line.

It’s large and empty-looking, holding only two other pieces of furniture: an old bureau and a nicked desk. Looking around, she can’t distinguish the large empty walls and space with anything or anyone familiar, and so with the dull ache of the bat still pulsing in the back of her head, a frantic hum of unease begins to settle over her body.

Lifting stiffly, she looks uneasily around the room. “Emma?” she whispers, but no one answers.

Her heels are gone and so is her belt. She finds them in a neat row on the desk beside her and with a keen sense of unease she slides her belt through the loops of her pants and steps into her heels, ignoring the faint ache in her knees at the thought of a quick escape. She opens the door slowly, helping it ease back shut behind her so it wouldn’t creak.

But in the hallway, her worry begins to ebb, taking notice of the familiar details in the faded white brick walls and narrow central hallway, the long black stairwell and the creaking floorboards.

On a desk, she finds a picture of her and Henry. Beside them are candles, flowers, and other small momentums of grief that Regina doesn’t know how to accept. She looks at the old washed out picture instead – she’d been tired from a long day of work and a stiff conversation with her son.

They walked home together and just in the span of a few minutes, she could feel the vast distance settling between them like two different shores facing a wide ocean, and impulsively she stopped Archie on a walk to press a camera into his hand. And though Henry resisted, squinting uneasily in the bright, cold light as she struggled with that strand of hair always falling into her face, she had the picture framed and set it on her desk for years.

Leaving the hallway, she trails down the stairway into the familiarly cluttered living room. She doesn’t notice Henry at first, sitting at the counter in the far corner, but when he stirs, she jumps and whirled around to face him.

“Hey,” he says and bunches his hands into the front of his jeans and looks up at her in a way he had as a kid, a wary kind of gentleness. “Um. How do you feel?”

“Fine, I’m fine..” she manages a small smile, though her fingers lift almost thoughtlessly to seek out the place where the bat had hit, now soft and bruised and rough to touch. “What are you doing here, darling?”

He glances away, shrugging. “I heard what happened.” His backpack is on the floor and his shoes in the spot next to him, as though he had walked in and moved to this exact place and has not moved since. A small muscle clenches in his cheek, tightening his face. “They uh, put him in the bathroom, by the way.”

She thinks of the large man, first. His bald, shiny head and white knuckles. It’s only when Henry glances nervously down the long narrow hallway that she thinks of the other option, the most likely – it being Graham who is locked away. Another version of her, really. The living dead.

She wonders if Graham’s return has changed anything for Henry: if he is fearful of her now or if Graham’s violence has broadened her return from a simple miracle into something else. Something more understandable.

Sighing, she draws her arms around her chest, the air cold from the open window. Remembering the chill, she looks at Henry. “Where is your jacket?” she asks.

He frowns. “Huh?”

“You had a jacket on this morning.” When he lifts an eyebrow, her lips purse with irritation. “Don’t give me that, it’s much too cold to be wearing only a tee shirt and jeans.”

For a moment he only stares up at her, eyes as bright and unblinking as an animal’s, until finally, the corners of his mouth give into a small smile. “Okay,” he says and grabs it from his backpack

The sweater catches on his ear as he pulls it on and though his hands are much larger than she remembers them being and his face far older, the way he struggles through a sweater is so incredibly Henry that for a moment she feels buoyant, the love in her lifting up from her chest and surrounding her like the ocean; she can only stand there helplessly, watching her son (so much older now) jerk his chin out of a sweater and pull it roughly over his head and down to his waist.

Finally, cheeks red, he pats the sweater down. “Good?” he asks.

“Good,” she says and smiles, tears prickling behind her eyes.

Silence surrounds them, cluttered with feeling the way a room is with stuff, with hanging pots and chipped cups and porcelain trinkets lining the wall, both meaningless and important.

It only lasts a minute before, helplessly, needing to protect a good moment she falls on to the one thing they both still share.

“Where is Emma?” she asks, and forces herself not to fidget when Henry looks up at her. “I’m sure she’s worried.”

“Yeah. It was bad for a while.” He sighs, “But she’s arguing with Snow right now, I think.”

He nods over his shoulder to the narrow balcony facing out into the sea, Emma and Snow visible only as cloudy impressions through the glass.

The sky has become a pale, wispy gray behind them, blurring the distant shapes of the trees and mountain into a faint foggy outline. Emma is standing with her arms wrapped protectively around her chest, and though the wind blows her hair partially across her face, she can see the sharp expression on her face, how the occasional response will curl her upper lip.

“Wonderful.” She sighs, even as something warms bubbles up inside of her, at the sight of something familiar: the odd squabble in the back of a room between Emma and her mother. She risks a glance to Henry and smiles, “Who do you think is winning?”

“I don’t think they even know.”

Regina chuckles. “Poor dear.” she says as she watches Emma’s agitation grow, her hair still whipping wildly in front of her face, “I’d say your mother probably needs saving the most.”

The old routine of settling disputes is already setting in her shoulders as she says it, but before she can step forward, Henry in front of her, glancing back with a small smile.

“It’s okay, I got it.”

“Oh.” She hesitates, “If you’re sure.”

Henry nods and she watches him go, feeling with just the small click of the door the way the past moves steadily into the present, creating new, unfamiliar routines. Memories formed entirely from her absence.

She remains standing, watching as Henry slides into the small space between his mother and Snow. It is easy to imagine then, the kind of spaces she left behind – the odd argument left unattended, uninterrupted, conversations circling anxiously away from the empty seat and empty table. Her death carving daily a space in the people she loves, a place where grief exists like the black, scraped walls of large empty caves, holding only space.

She burns with a need to be a part of it again. To be pulled back into the life she left behind. For it all to be worth it, for her to be back with her family, and all the spaces in her house filled again.

Before she is completely aware of it she is already making her way down the narrow hallway, past all the hanging pictures to the bathroom door where a soft light glows beneath its door.

Sliding in, she takes in the small cluttered bathroom. The walls are a soft white with green shutters and empty seashells lining the top of a cupboard. There is a jar of dried daffodils in a mason jar, dying gently on the windowsill. Graham is sitting in the shower with his hands cuffed to a thin rail above his head, his arms dangling limply. He is watching her dully, his face blank and placid.

She waits for some reaction, some anger to flicker across his face but the only movement she can see is the idle twitch of his fingers, flexing into a fist before stretching out again. There is still a thin line of blood visible beneath his fingernails. Her hands slide uneasily down her waistcoat, hiding warily in its comforting pockets.

“I assume you remember who I am?” Regina asks walks closer and pauses at the tall glass doors. A muscle tightens in Graham’s jaw, but he nods. “And you know what’s happened to you?”

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” His voice is a soft familiar rumble. It’s not the voice she’d been expecting.

“Yes.” she answers gently.

“Why aren’t you in one of these?” He asks and gently twists his wrists, the handcuffs clanging gently against the porcelain wall and the steel rail it is tying him to.

It seems for a moment that he knows she’s dead, as well. That she should be considered just as dangerous as he is. But the look in his eyes is more telling, glowering with a hard edge of hatred and she sighs with understanding, “It’s been nine years since the curse broke, Graham.”

Graham’s expression blanks. “Nine years.” he echoes and flexes his fingers, the small bones cracking quietly. She considers explaining, but she is so tired of the old, weary practice of defending herself, fighting against the old evils she has worn on her heart for so long, untouched by the good she’s done, by her fierce, unending apology.

Graham doesn’t speak again, only staring at the pale green bathroom tiles below her feet. Straightening, she pushes through her hesitancy, pushing for the sure direct route, each questions like an arrow pointing straight to her heart

“You are covered in blood.” She says and steps close enough to regain his attention. “Do you know why?”

The corner of his mouth twitches with contempt. “Yes.”

“Do you know whose blood it belongs to?” He frowns at her for a moment before shaking his head. Her skin prickles with fear. “What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t know.” He grumbles.

“How could you not _know_?”

He stares up at her with an odd tilt of his head as though he knows his words are the ones she dreads, and they are, they are. “It happened suddenly. I woke up feeling normal…maybe a little hungry, but it didn’t feel too unusual. I was fine and then I wasn’t.” Her heart shudders like blinders falling closed and she thinks, no, tell me anything but that, anything but that.

Regina’s fingers curl and uncurl listlessly in her pocket, as if pushing blood through her hands will keep her calm. “So it just happened? That’s it?”

“No.” His jaw clenched. “I started to remember how it felt. Your hand crushing around my heart, turning my life into nothing.” His breathes in deeply, his fingers clenching into hard fists. “I started realizing what happened to me, and started feeling angry. More than I ever have before. More than what could possibly be normal. There was so much of it, it was the only thing I could feel.”

The words pulse in the back of her head, familiar. She tries to keep her breath even, her heart calm. “It happened when you got angry.”

“My vision started to blur.” Graham continues, “And then I guess anger turned to hunger cause it was all I could think about. I felt hollow, I was so _hungry_. I wanted then to tear something apart.” Her stomach clenches sharply and she struggles to shake it off, the sharp recognizing ache, the familiar hunger pangs.

Weakly, she leans against the glass door, her fingers catching the edge to keep her steady. “And are you…?” She hesitates, unsure if she wants to know. “Are you still hungry?”

Something dark passes quickly across his face. “Yes,” he says, finally. He glances up at the uneven ceiling above him. “I am.”

There is a raw pain in her throat and for once she is grateful for it, grateful that she has to work harder to get the words out, that they might remain there, trapped behind her teeth.

But they don’t of course, because like any indulgence, it slips in after only a moment of hesitation as she is stealing a half-breath. “What did it feel like?”

For a moment, he just stares at her, his expression eerily similar to the way it had been within the curse, blank and unseeing. But then slowly, he smiles. “You died too, didn’t you?”

She stiffens, a gaping horror expanding in the space between her ribs, but she shuffles it away, sending it somewhere behind her bared teeth. “Of course not.”

“Can you not sleep either, then?”

“I sleep just _fine_.”

“Right,” he chuckles, smiling with sharp teeth. There is a knowledge trapped somewhere inside of him where her fury cannot shake it.

She stands stubbornly in the silence, wanting to leave but knowing it would feel like defeat if she did. She glares out at the green window shutters and the filmy grey of the sky, the salt-sea air brushing the leaves against the glass, and at the line of empty seashells along the window sill with its slow-dying flowers.

After a moment, he shifts and extended a long leg out ahead of him. “It felt like sleep.” he says at last and when she looks back at him, he gives a small tilt of his head, leaning it against the wall. “Having a full stomach – it was like waking up from a full night of sleep.”

Quickly, she leaves – but even when the door closes firmly behind her, and all of Graham is separated from her, she cannot calm the hard beating of her heart, rattling like tree branches in the wind, knocking against each other.

It’s a few minutes of silence before she can hear the noises from outside enter again, the glass door sliding open and closed as footsteps patter in along with their voices. She forces herself to move, her legs stiff and slow with reluctance, she navigates closer towards the living room where all of the clatter and noise is, the argument long ended as the lives of her family begin to settle back into what must feel like normalcy.

Standing in the narrow hallway, she watches Henry and Snow in the small kitchen as they move in absent movement, Snow flicking through pages of her planner, ticking off dates as Henry talks, leaning against the counter. So much ease, so much comfort. It feels suddenly impossible to enter.

It is with a sharp stab of relief that she catches Emma jumping quickly up the stairs towards her room, her bare feet flashing briefly behind her. Regina moves quickly, avoiding the loud living room and the beginning of conversation to hurry up the stairs behind Emma.

She considers waiting until Emma notices her but when Emma pokes her head in, she can sense the stress tightening in her again a she glances around the empty room. So instead, quietly, she clears her throat.

Emma jumps and whips around. “Fuck,” she gasps, opening her face into a tragic kind of relief. She leans heavily against the doorway. “What is it with you and disappearing?”

“I like to keep you on your toes,” she says, but the corner of Emma’s smile is pinched with pain.

“How’s your head?” she asks, after a pause. Regina can see the twitch in her fingers, the nervous impulse to lift to the spot behind her head, where she likely fears the worst exists there, far worse than a rough patch of skin, a simple bruise. She fears, as Regina does, something that will not heal or close. That will not return to normal.

“It’s fine.”

“Good.” Emma says, watching her with a deep and obvious concern.

It feels inviting, and with the conversation audible below, going on about life she has no knowledge of, she feels the desperate need for comfort. The need for touch flashes hotly inside of her, pushing her forward until she can set her chin on Emma’s shoulder and slide her arms around her in a weak hug. I

For a fleeting, terrible moment, Emma is completely still. But then Emma is pulling her closer with a solid hand at the back of her neck, pressing her warm blushing body against hers.

Sighing deeply, Regina leans her forehead against Emma’s neck feeling suddenly propped up, as though she’d been slowly sinking through the floorboards and then helped up again. It has something to do with her boneless responses, willingly giving her exactly what she needs. It’s an unbelievable comfort, to press her cheek against Emma’s and not feel a wince.

After a while, Emma sighs, leaning her head on Regina’s shoulder. “You tired?”

“No, not really.” Regina answers, though it’s not entirely true. There is exhaustion in her that sleep cannot reach.

“I guess it’s just me.” Emma puffs out a breath, “I don’t really know why. I basically just played cards and argued with my mother today.”

“I think you’re forgetting how you were strangled only an hour ago.”

“Wasn’t a bat to the head, that’s for sure.”

“It was still pretty terrifying.” Regina whispers and gently brushes the back of her knuckles down the small dark marks still visible on Emma’s neck. “Does it still hurt?”

“No.” Emma gently squeezes her closer. “Thanks for saving me, though.”

“Thanks for jumping in front of me.” Regina retorts dryly, “Even if you are an idiot.”

Emma’s ribs quiver with a soft laugh and Regina presses her closer; they had always shied away from physical contact before, initiated usually, awkwardly, by Emma after a long period of not seeing her at all. She’d pull her in a quick hurried squeeze of affection Regina never entirely understood. She often found herself thinking about it later, measuring out the intimacy with seconds and pressure, wondering if she's imagined the longing or if it was simply her own.

She always thought they’d have more time to figure it out - all these rushed goodbyes and quick hugs, these feeling like a riptide between them. Now it is five years later and quite possibly too late.

Clearing her throat, Regina gently steps back. “We should get going, shouldn’t we?”

“Oh.” Emma gently steps back too, sliding her hands into her back pockets. “We can’t. Not yet. We’re um, supposed to waiting for David to come home so we can all have a talk about we’re going to do next.”

Regina sighs deeply. “Let’s leave anyway.”

Emma smiles, “If you think we can get away with it.”

“The door is unlocked, isn’t it?” When Emma nods, she says, “Then yes, I think we can get away with it.”

“Alright.” she chuckles, “Let’s do it, then”

“Are we really?”

“Yeah, sure. David already texted me anyway.” she hums. “We can figure out the rest tomorrow.”

“Alright.” Regina smiles, the thought of home warming her chest. “What did he need to text you for?”

Emma’s smile dims in the corners of her mouth. “Um…he was you know…just closing up the scene.” Regina catches the brief twitch of Emma’s fingers curling in, hiding into the flat of her palm. “And…well, he was out…uh, looking for a body, too.”

Her happiness is swept aside so swiftly it leaves a tingling emptiness inside. “He found it?”            

“Yeah, he found it.” Emma shrugs and tries for a smile. “It was just a deer, as it turns out.”

Just a deer, yet there is hesitancy around Emma’s smile. For anyone else, it might return Graham’s violence into a normalcy people can understand: people who lived in the forest and knew him to be a hunter. The blood, the death – it can be understood purely as tracking down prey and killing it. The gore stuck beneath his fingernails and between his teeth can be forgotten.

“Good,” she says, but Emma is still smiling that difficult smile and she can’t stop thinking of Graham and that broad, blank expression on his face, the ‘ _I don’t know’_ and the dried blood on his fingers, unknown to him, lost in that balking, blind hunger.

Falling into silence, they shuffle back downstairs and into the quiet of the kitchen where Emma maneuvers around her mother’s anger to deliver a quick goodbye kiss to her cheek and Henry’s. She manages a timid smile of her own, waving to Henry who glances away and back again, his eyes dark and his mouth lost somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

They push out of the door a moment later to rush out into the cool winter air, walking past Henry’s truck down to the bug parked silently at the bottom of the driveway. Emma makes noises all the way through, groaning from the cold as they shut doors and pull on seatbelts, bumping fingers as they press them against the sputtering heater.

It’s silent for more than half the way before Emma glances back at her, a strange expression on her face. “Hey,” her mouth pulls into an awkward smile. “You want to go somewhere to eat or something?”

“No,” she glances at Emma’s thumb, idly tapping against the worn car wheel. “I’m sure what we have at home is fine.” It’s why she went shopping after all. Even if the thought of cooking is exhausting and already she knows that it won’t be enough, really.

The corners of Emma’s mouth twist to the side even as she nods her head, turning to stare back out the window. Regina watches her thumb tap four beats against the wheel before she speaks again. “But if you’re like, really hungry or something we can get something more. I don’t mind stopping.”

Dread sinks in her stomach, tightening her shoulders. “I said I’m fine, dear.”

“Okay.” Emma sighs.

The silence, previously quiet and numb, tenses as it surrounds them. To avoid it, Regina looks out of the window, watching the dark silent houses pass by, glinting softly in the yellow streetlights. People walk in the cold, bundled up, breathing out clouds of breath, disappearing in the soft grey between lights.

The car rolls to a stop at a red light and they sit in silence, staring out at the still houses and the dark, wet road until finally, stomach twisting unbearably, Regina turns back to her. “Why did you ask me that?”

The corners of Emma’s mouth wrinkles and Regina can hardly breathe as she watched it, her mind moving restlessly and thoughts hopping from place to place like birds on rooftops, thinking – _please, please, not you, too_.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” she whispers.

Emma’s head snaps like a ratchet gun. “ _Hey_ , no _._ Not at _all.”_ Her voice is as firm and flat as a hand, pressing against hers. “I told you that I got your back no matter what. And I mean that. I’m here for _all of it_ – whatever that means.”

Emma bites her bottom lip, her thumb nail rubbing over a rough leather patch, worn thin. “I can’t say I’m not scared for what might happen – cause I honestly don’t know what that will be. I’d like to think nothing – I’d like to think Graham is just violent by nature and not by whatever is causing this…” she breaths out, suddenly. “But I think what might be worse. For me, what might be worse is the thought that you might be here right now, _starving_ – wanting something more but too afraid to say it. Too afraid to tell me.”

Regina leans back, stunned. Emma only continues staring out the window, her thumb pressing hard against the wheel as worry touches her face like the soft yellow glow of the street lights above them.

The light turns green, but Emma remains paused, staring up at the rear view mirror and at the long, empty street extending behind them. She pulls in a deep breath and points a finger down the road. “So. Home?” she asks, then flicks her finger to the left lane. “Or really good fatty hamburgers?”

It takes a moment, the air too thick to speak, but when the distance glows faintly with an incoming car, Regina sighs. “Hamburgers.”

Emma smiles and flicks her turn signal on.

*

It’s late and Regina is staring up at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her alarm clock sits beside her, and with a gentle tap of her finger its face illuminates with a dim white glow, revealing the sturdy black hands at two and twelve.

Two o’clock.

It’s been three hours since she first settled into bed. It seemed possible, at the time, warmed from a glass of wine and a (mostly) full stomach, that she would be able to fall asleep. She could sink into the cool sheets and press effortlessly into dreams as she had before, seemingly effortlessly – but now it eludes her, ebbing from her grasp, floating like clouds above her head.

Tossing the sheets aside, she rises from bed and pads quietly into the hallway.

She heard Henry’s footsteps over an hour ago, but still, just to check, she peeks through the small crack in the door to see Henry on his bed. The sight of him sleeping had always amused her– even as a child he would lie flat on his stomach with his face pressed into the pillow and with his arms stretched high over his head, his legs positioned as though he were in the middle of a sprint.

It makes her heart beat warm and with a soft sigh, she quietly closes the door again.

There are still quite a few hours before they wake, and with the house large and silent around her she finds herself slipping into Emma’s room only a few minutes later. There is a small chair beside Emma’s bed where she settles quietly to watch Emma sleep. Asleep, Emma looks content, breathing evenly with her long gold hair splayed out across the pillow, her eyes closed.

Regina nearly jumps when Emma speaks, "Couldn't sleep?"

"Oh." she awkwardly rises from the seat, stiff. “I’m sorry, dear. I shouldn’t have come in.”

“No, no stay.” Emma slips a hand out from the sheets to warm the top of her ankle. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Well. Alright." Regina breathes and slowly settles back into her chair.

Emma smiles and gently brushes the tips of her fingers along Regina's foot. "So. Can’t sleep?”

“No. I'm afraid not." Gently, she clears her throat. "I don't think I'm capable of it.”

"Oh." Emma blinks and suppresses a yawn against her arm as she leans over to point at the small desk in the corner of her room. “Well, I kept some of your books on the top shelf over there, if you want to read them or something. You can turn on the light, too, if you want.” she murmurs. "I don't mind."

“That's alright, dear.” Regina smiles, “Thank you.”

“Alright.” Emma sinks back into her bed, yawning once before sighing, “Do you think other people have come back?”

Regina hadn’t considered the possibility yet, but as it settles in the air she feels her heart tighten in her chest. “Yes.” she says, “I think so.”

“Okay.”

“Go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Emma whispers, a smile crinkling the corner of her mouth. But her hand is still warm on her foot, her fingers coasting down from up from small bones of her toes to her ankle, squeezing with a quick spasm of emotion. “I’m so happy you’re back.”

Tenderness catches in Regina’s throat – for Emma’s soft bed-wrangled body and her long hair, for her endless devotion, for her steadiness like the cement outside, like the trembling fingers on her ankle, trying to hold on to her in some way. The tenderness sweeps high and clear like a kite in the sky until she is lifting herself up on shaky legs and moving closer.

She settles on the bed beside her, directing Emma’s head onto her lap because she cannot speak. She combs her fingers through Emma’s hair until Emma sighs and closes her eyes, so suddenly at peace that Regina has stop herself from promising her everything. All the small impossible things in life. That everything will be okay, that she will be alright. That everyone will be safe.

“I’m here.” she promises instead; she combs through Emma’s hair until her breathing evens out.

She remains by Emma’s side, sitting on the soft, spongy mattress of her bed until the early morning touches the corners of the sky, lighting the windows. From the bed, she can hear the quiet hum of morning traffic and see the yellow haze of streetlights touching the corners of her yard.

For a brief, terrifying moment, she thinks she sees someone at the edge of her property. A familiar figure, a woman. She stands behind a bush, looking up at the window, at her. It has her mother’s narrow shoulders and the slender, cool danger of a slowly approaching snake. For a moment, her chest seizes with terror, overcome with dread, tightening her fingers into a painfully grip on Emma’s hair.

_Do you think other people have come back?_

The quiet, pained whimper in Emma’s throat tears her eyes away, releasing her grip immediately. “Sorry.” she whispers and sighs, echoing her apology again against the soft spot in Emma’s temple. She waits until Emma’s breathing has evened out again before looking back. But the figure is gone, just a trick of the bare branches and shadows.

 _Just a trick_ , she assures herself and waits until the morning stretches the shadows out across her lawn, innocent, blameless.

But the dread remains.


	2. when we're fire

The morning is rushed and urgent.

Graham’s violent return had the effect of a cold wind through the town, slipping through houses and setting people on edge. Quietly, family members have turned their family in like empty pockets to their coats, nervously picking out their grandmothers and children alike, afraid suddenly of their odd hunger and their sleeplessness.

It’s become more than just her and Graham. Emma is in the study making a list. A list she is a part of, a list of the dead. She doesn’t want to think about who else might have come back.

She stays away for as long as she can, but since coming back silence has felt different to her. It's more familiar and frightening than before – it can make an empty living room feel strange and lonesome, as though she was strapped in the seat of an airplane climbing high into the sky, tumbling through white clouds, a hundred miles off the earth. She remains sitting in the living room until she can’t any longer, until the empty space around her conquers her fear of familiar names.

Rising, she walks down the hall and opens the door to her study.

Emma looks up at her in surprise.

“Hey, there.”  She is wearing thin black glasses that hang off the bridge of her nose. With the flat of her thumb, she pushes back up. “I didn’t think you wanted to be in here.”

“I changed my mind.” Regina gently closes the door. “How is it?”

“Shitty.” Emma grumbles and rubs at her eyes. “The laptop is shit and my glasses are all smudged.”

Warmth blooms in her chest. “I meant the list.” she smiles, her first one that morning, and walks closer. “Although, I am interested by your glasses. I didn’t know you wore them.”

“Oh yeah,” Emma smiles, resting her head back against the chair. “I usually wear contacts, but didn't handle time to bother with them today. This morning was kind of…rushed.” She frowns and blinks down at her laptop screen. It flickers with a dim blue glow. “People are turning in their family in almost every minute. David is sending me more names from the station.”

Regina makes the final few steps to the desk. Standing beside Emma, she can see the long list of names, information lined neatly in an Excel sheet, a sporadic group of details: first name, last name, year of death, and its location. Looking quickly, she searches for any name that starts with _Leo_ , and then once more for _C_.

“Are these all of them?” she asks.

“I don’t even know,” Emma sighs and leans forward, her fingers finding the keyboard again and typing steadily; she finishes the name: _Ruana Singh_. “Most people on this list have been reported by their family. A few have turned themselves in. But really, there is no knowing how many are out there.”

She nods, warming her arms with her hands; the air is cold, the window cracked open a bit, and in the quiet she can hear the wind whipping through the trees, the branches creaking like old door hinges in a house, closing all around her. Emma continues typing.

After a moment, the words sharp and difficult on her tongue, she asks, “Has anything... _weird_ happened?”

When Emma only glances up at her, she sighs. “Like Graham?”

“Oh,” Emma says. “No. I don't think so, at least. From what I've heard it's just the sleeplessness. And the hunger you mentioned. But nothing violent.”

“Well. Good.”

The laptop flickers, the rain outside beating harder. A power line might go out, Regina thinks and wonders whether the Mayor this time will know what to do with a power grid.

Emma clears her throat again. “There is this one thing…That’s kind of weird.”

"What is it?" Regina asks, gently preparing to numb herself further.

“It's nothing bad,” Emma says quietly, thumbing an eyebrow. “It's just unexpected. But...well, people have been returning from all different kind of realms.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They’re waking up near the wishing well.” Emma leans her head back to look up at her, smiling, her eyes straining through the difficulty of her smudged glasses. “You know August once told me that that well was special. That it could return lost things. Do you think it has anything to do with this?”

The idea hadn’t occurred to her, but even as its possibility opens inside she feels herself turning away from it, the way she would turn from a rush of cold air. "No, I don't think so."

She hesitates when Emma frowns at her, taking a moment to explain, "Not the way you think it is, at least. People who are returning and have no memory of this place might be waking up by the well because – as August said - it’s a way for lost things to come back. But I don’t think this is some kind of elaborate wish.”

Emma nods slowly, but she is drifting away from her, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve, circling it with the edge of her thumb. Regina waits in the silence until she can’t anymore, the quiet putting a hard edge on her tone.

“The dead don't just come back because there are people who want them to. The world doesn’t worry over people like that.”

Emma shrugs, still not looking at her. “Well, why not?”

Because it didn't happen with Daniel, she thinks. But even as she does, the thoughts stir loose and she wonders over the significance of the past when the present holds so much more. Emma and her son and a hundred other impossible things: the dead returning, waking up from where they last remembered, stumbling through a world that's changed in the years that passes without them, searching for their way back home.

She is _here_ , despite her strange and difficult life, despite everything that was pushed against her. Despite her coffin and all the layers of earth that held her body down.

"I don't know much about magic,” Emma starts to say, her voice distant. “When you died, it just stopped working with me. So maybe it’s something more complicated than that – maybe this is some spell or some curse, I don’t really know – but the one thing I _do_ know is that I never stopped thinking about you. Not once. Every day felt like I was just waiting, and hoping, and _missing you_. It- it seemed impossible to me that you were really gone. That I could _feel_ this much –” Her hands move helplessly. “- _longing_ and anger and helplessness without it _meaning_ something."

She shivers suddenly with an understanding that hurts. If there is one thing to truly hate about the world, it is its unfailing ability to go on, to continue even when you are unraveling within it.

“I don’t really know what caused all of this,” Emma's voice sounds small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. “But all these people have family. They’re all returning to someone, someone who – who might not have been able to let go. I mean wouldn't that explain why some people have come back and others haven’t?" Emma is looking at the list again and Regina glances at the screen too, though she doesn’t need to. She remembers all of the names on the list. She knows that Neal isn’t one of them.

“Well,” she says finally. “Maybe you’re right, then.”

She isn’t entirely convinced, but it seems suddenly possible: that the rings of love that touch from one heart to another are not wiped away in death; that they can exist like some far away echo, calling gently for those long dead to return. She stands there for a little while, calm touching her gently the way waves do at the beach, sliding around her ankles as a cool, persistent truth (thinking: no one, no one alive, would miss her mother this much).

It’s only a little while later - when Emma is closing the lid of her laptop and stretching in her seat, conversation traveling into more comfortable, easy avenues that the thought comes to her, crashing into her as suddenly as a speeding car, scattering bright broken glass inside her head - that she thinks: _Zelena_ , _Zelena would._

*

It takes a day of wondering before she comes to a decision.

The town’s base lies in a vague blueprint in her mind. She knows Zelena’s cabin is somewhere in the forest, and with a vague direction in mind, she sets out of the house in a heavy coat, the thin layer of ice on the driveway crunching beneath her boots.

At the end of the driveway, she hears the faint click of the garage door opening and turns around.

The back of Henry’s truck peeks out before slowly coming to a stop, the engine dying. After a pause, the door swings open and Henry’s face peeks out, squinting down at her through the cold air.

“Are you going somewhere?” he calls out.

“Just on a walk, dear.” She answers and walks closer. “Where are you going, darling?”

“Gonna go see someone.”

The vague answer pricks at her, tightening her mouth. “Really.” She straightens her shoulders and only barely remembers that five years have passed and that her thirteen year old boy is in fact eighteen with a car of his own. He has friends that she may have never met before. Warily, she allows the argument to pass, bundling her numb fingers in her pockets for warmth. “Do I know them?”

“I don’t know," he says, a jaunting smile on his mouth. "How about you? Who are you going to see?”

Blinking, for a moment she stands with a mingled sense of pride and indignation. There was once a time when her questions were met with answers immediately, with a flinching truth. And while a part of her longs to be that unwavering mother again, to steal an answer without having to give, another of her blooms with joy at the expression on her son's face, so familiar it might as well have been her own.

"Very well.” She sighs with a smile, walking closer so that her voice won't be carried away by the cold air. "I'm going to see Zelena."

“Why?” he frowns.

“I have an odd feeling,” she says, and considers expanding, revealing more, but she shies against it – it may take something away from the future, a possibility she still might want. “I want to see if I'm right or wrong,” She states instead.

Henry looks at her carefully. "So...you might be in danger or something?"

"No." She says but it feels too close to a lie, tingling unpleasantly on her tongue she wonders if it is. “Not from Zelena, at least.”

Henry nods and idly knocks the heel of his boot on his car’s door stoop, clearing away the snow. From where she is, she can see the dull shine of his snow jacket, something new and unfamiliar, but around his neck is an old Christmas gift from her, his old red and black scarf, knotted around his neck and tucked neatly into his jacket.

His hair is long enough to cover his ears and she is close enough that in just a few steps she could reach out and touch him. Her fingertips tingle with the cool air and the memory his hair, having brushed it from his forehead a hundred times before.

Swallowing painfully, she slowly steps away. "I should be going, dear.”

There is a pause, a moment of hesitation before her son sighs and rubs a heavy hand behind his neck. “Well, if you want I can drive you.”

"Really?” she halts.

Henry shrugs, looking away from her. “Sure. It’s a long walk.” He gently thumb the keys in his hands. They jingle quietly, filled with its own clutter. “I’m already going in that direction, anyway. If you want a ride.”

“Yes.” She says immediately, before it can be snatched away. “Yes, that would be wonderful, dear. Thank you.”

Henry shuffles in and she joins him on the other side, sliding into the passenger seat. As he turns the key, the ignition clicking, the dashboard light up as that one clear radio station fills the car with old 80s music that chases away the awkward silence. Henry backs out of the driveway into the street, the truck large and steady, groaning quietly through turns and stops and speed bumps.

She glances at the rearview mirror, watching the road flicker by, framed by the weedy side of the road and the large green side of the truck. "I never knew you wanted a truck," she says, without really meaning to.

Henry glances back at her. His hands remain firmly on either side of the wheel, the way she would have wanted him to drive if she had the chance to teach him. She remembers Emma’s loose hand at the top, her easy, softened rules and forgetful glances at the side mirrors.  

There is a small frown between Henry's brows. "Yeah, well," He shrugs, and touches base with all the mirrors. "Emma wouldn't let me get anything else.""Really?” she frowns. “Why?"

Henry leans his arm on the window and raps his knuckles along the hard metal door. "It’s big. Safe. There’s some security in it, I guess." His fingers tap along the door again as he looks out the window. "That was Emma’s priority. To make sure that if I _do_ get in an accident, I’ll be the one surviving it."

Her skin tingles with the memory of metal and glass and freezing water.

"Of course," she says, and stares out the window, struggling to return to this seat, to this car, to the steady rhythm of the road beneath her. A few minutes pass before she can manage her voice, make it firm again.

“You drive very well, dear. I’m impressed,” she says. “Emma taught you well."

“Yeah, I guess she did.”

Regina nods, though she can’t imagine how Emma’s rushed, choppy movements giving away to this, to Henry’s practiced hands and careful eyes, checking every mirror and every side street.

Quietly, a memory of Henry on her lap as she drove her car slowly around the parking lot returns to her. She remembers his cold five year old hands directing the wheel with delicate precision.

She remembers his nervous questions. _Is this too fast? Momma, should I park it now?_ She feels again what she had felt then – the disastrous love, opening the doors to her heart and closing her throat - how she had to press her mouth to the back of his head just to muffle her sharp laugh and the sudden urge to cry; how tightly she had held him.

“I always thought I would be the one to teach you.” she finds herself saying, her voice nearly breathless.

Henry looks at her, startled; the words sit in the air like the ice in the street and Regina doesn't look at him. She doesn’t want to know what has reflected back on his face.

"Emma tried, you know. To teach me the way you - Mom would have wanted me to know." He stumbles over the word and she lets it pass, lets it go. “She bought a few books so that she could have it all sitting in her lap whenever we went out for a drive. Even if it was just around the block, she'd grab one of those stupid books to flip back so that she could scold me when I did something questionable."

Regina chuckles. "Well, I'm glad after so many years, the Sheriff finally learned some laws." Emma, her dear sweet idiot.

"Maybe someone other than her will break a law one day."

Regina sighs, "And I'm the fool who hired her.”

When Henry laughs, she clings to the love they both share; it centers them, holds them together.

Beneath her feet, she can feel the wheels of the truck rolling over snow to rougher gravel, the car bumping along a narrow dirt road as the quiet 80s music comes in and out of static in waves.

It’s only a few minutes later before Henry is pulling to the side of the road and turning off the engine. Through the gaps of the trees, Regina can see the cabin. The white paint is peeling away to reveal the soft wood beneath, leaving gaps between doorways and windows. On the windows there are aluminum blinders, closed shut.

Henry makes a small sound in the back of his throat, leaning out to look through the window. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

For once, his worry comes through transparently, as clear as rushing water. “Yes dear,” she smiles, “I’ll be fine.”

Sliding her purse onto her arm, she glances around the car. In the back seat, she notices a small bouquet of white flowers. “Oh,” she says, without meaning too, and feels the nervous quake of her heart against her ribs, knowing there are parts of her son’s life that she doesn’t know about. She wants to force the subject, but with just a glimpse of the cabin up ahead, the words fall away from her. “Have fun with your friend, dear,” she says instead.

Henry blinks, his face puzzled before he glances back at the bouquet and it smooths out again. “Right,” he sighs, and taps his thumb against the wheel again. It’s a nervous tick he shares with his mother. She counts three beats before he turns to her again. “Do you like… have a phone or anything?”

Instinctively, her hand falls to her purse before she remembers. “Damn.” she mutters, frowning.

“Still don’t have one?” Henry asks.

“No,” she sighs. “I keep forgetting about it.”

There is a pause, hesitation flickering on Henry’s face before it falls away and he is opening a glove box and pulling out another phone.

“Here,” Henry says, passing it over; it’s background is an old picture of her, Henry, and Emma, looking up from a table at Granny’s, caught mostly unaware by Snow’s quick snap of her camera. “I don’t think Emma will mind you using it.”

“No,” she answers, but she is still focused on Emma’s lockscreen. “You don’t think she might need it?”

Henry shrugs. “She’d want you to have it if it meant you were any safer.” Quietly, he clears his throat and looks away. “Anyway, you might need a ride back or something. And you can text me that you’re, you know… safe or whatever.”

Regina smiles, a spasm of love closing her throat. “Alright.” she says, and slips the phone into her purse. “I will.”

As she leaves, the cold light outside makes the interior of the car seem so much darker, covering her son’s face in shadows. But even through the dark she can see that his head is turned towards her, watching her through the closed door. She can feel his eyes even as she shuffles up the narrow walkway and turns around the corner towards the house, disappearing beyond pine trees and the bulk of other things.

Walking up the stairs, she knocks hard on the door and waits the few minutes it takes for the movement within the house to move away from distant rooms into the entryway. There is no pause between the sound of footsteps and the lock sliding from the door.

When the door opens, Zelena looks completely unsurprised.

“Well,” Zelena sighs with gentle exasperation. “It’s about time.” She turns and trails back inside the house, leaving the door open. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to visit your sister at all.”

Regina hesitates in the doorway.

Inside is warm and spacious, the walls faded to the color of sea shells. Stepping forward, she gently closes the door behind her.

“I certainly hope you weren’t expecting a visit these last five years.” Regina says, “If so I’m afraid you’ve been terribly misinformed.”

She hears Zelena laugh from somewhere in another room, moving with her as she walks into the kitchen, a kettle in hand. “I mean af _ter_ you woke up. I had to hear about my sister returning from the _dead_ through the rumor mill.”

"You poor dear."

“Ugh and from that idiot, too." She waves a cloudy hand, her nose crinkling. "The one who works at that hardware shop and talks _straight_ out of his ass.”

“August?” she smiles.

“Yes, _him_. He was wearing that ridiculous scarf too,” Zelena nearly gags as she sits the kettle heavily on the stove. “Completely embarrassing. Anyway, tea?”

The small spasm of affection in her chest is unavoidable. “Very well.” she says and watches Zelena flicks on the stove, the flames tickling the side of the kettle. “You know, you don’t seem very surprised about the dead having come back to life, dear.”

Zelena hums, voice dry. "Should I be?"

"I'd say it's a little unusual."

“Well, it can’t be all that impossible if that idiot in the hospital managed to do it.” Zelena sets two cups down on the counter, large and impersonal like the ones a waitress slaps down in Granny’s diner. “Do you want Earl Grey? I’m partial to it but I do have this pomegranate one in the pantry, if you’re up for the risk.”

“Earl Grey is fine.”

“Oh, you bore. You’ll like the pomegranate one.” Zelena is already leaving the room. “I’ll just be a minute.” She says as she turns the corner, disappearing into another room. Regina sighs and sits in one of the old wooden chairs in the kitchen.

The house surrounds her in its minute details, in the spacious room and unfamiliar furniture, the walls mostly empty except where the white paint peeled back to old wooden planks beneath like old rotten pieces of a boat. She could see oil paintings of the sea in far distant rooms.

It is nothing of what she expected and yet unsurprising; the house holds the same quaint unkempt air she had assumed of her sister, as well as the probability of it not belonging to her.

The kettle starts to whistle, returning Zelena with a box of tea and oven mitts, maneuvering around the counter to pour hot water recklessly into each cup. As Regina watches, she feels a sudden dislocation from her purpose; she sits in an old kitchen chair, warm and comfortable, almost close to forgetting why she checked the address of her sister’s house.

Regina accepts the cup carefully. “You seem to be managing the place well.” she says, glancing around. She takes a small sip. “You didn’t kick anyone out of here, did you?”

“Oh no, it was long empty.” Zelena says and when Regina only waits, sipping her tea again, she sighs. “I might have convinced the man he’d prefer living closer to the sea, which –” she waves her hand around. “ _clearly_ he would – I mean honestly, what in the world compelled him to live in the middle of the forest. I don’t know.”

“You seem to be taking your second chance to heart,” she says instead, half mocking, half amused.

Something in Zelena’s expression shifts. “No, I guess not,” she says, and in the span of seconds between her words, her smile sharpens. “But really, what’s so good about them? You were tromping around with the heroes once and now…” She waves a hand with just the tips of her fingers, carelessly finishing her sentence.

Regina clenches her teeth, her elbows pressing hard against her ribs as a warm red anger creeps up along her back. She’d like to prove, in some way, that this life right now, the one she is living again, is evidence enough of her second chance. But it feels like a stretch in terms of living even now, only an hour from eating, this new raw hunger still lurks inside of her like a shark in dark water.

Setting aside her tea, she sighs and leans back into the chair. “Well, let’s just cut to the chase, then.”

Zelena’s smile dims around the corners. “Right,” she slumps slightly against her chair. “No point in catching up with your sister. Whatever. If you’ve come for a magical explanation, I don’t have one,” she says, her thumbnail scratching unpleasantly against the length of her cup.

Regina resists the urge to reach over and still Zelena’s agitation. She doesn’t. “I didn’t come for an explanation,” she says. “I have one already. What I want to know, only you can answer.”

Zelena narrows her eyes, “What do you possibly have to explain this?”      

“Emma has a theory.” She starts, and almost doesn’t finish, unsure if it’s laughable or not. “Well, she thinks it has something to do with the wishing well.”

“Like someone made a wish and brought back hundreds of dead people.” Zelena smiles sweetly, “Sounds like you got a smart one, sis.”

“I do.” she snaps, “And she doesn’t think it’s just one person. It’s everyone. Whoever has someone they miss. Or someone they want to bring back – whatever, the point is they’d have that chance to bring them back. I don’t know why, yet. I don’t know how.”

“So she thinks people are being brought back simply because they miss them?” Zelena says, her voice drifting off almost wistfully.

Regina hesitates. The house _feels_ empty: there is no movement from the other rooms, no rustle of fabric or patter of feet, not even in the structure of the house, in its old doors and wooden floors. The house would creak and groan if anyone tried to leave in the middle of their discussion. There would be evidence of her mother somewhere.

Regina reaches for her cup again. “Maybe it’s possible. I don’t have any other reason to believe it’s not.” She feels the edge of her words on her tongue, wondering, _would you miss our mother enough_? The words feel like cold dirt in her mouth. Instead, she says, “Emma wants to believe it.”

“I’m not surprised she does,” Zelena states impassively, pulling the tea bag out of her cup. “It certainly makes the living dead sound less sinister. They can’t do anything too terrible if they’re coming back from simply being _loved_ enough.”

Regina doesn’t have time to consider if it’s a bait or not – she bites, rattled. “You think that’s her intention, then? To make me sound less frightening to her?”

Zelena smirks, “Do you think she’s frightened of you?”

“ _No_.” she snaps, but when Zelena looks up at her, she feels suddenly transparent. All her fears and worries colliding inside of her like the heavy beating of her heart, as loud as tiny hammers beating along the old wooden walls of the house, surrounding them.

Though she straightens, holding herself taller in her chair, she cannot steel the odd tremble in her fingers.

“Maybe she isn’t, then.” Zelena says. Her thumb makes idle circles along the side of the cup. “But, really, if you missed someone enough to bring them back, would it really matter if they frightened you?”

Regina frowns. “What do you mean?”

“If you really did miss them. What they became afterwards wouldn’t matter. You’d still have that chance to be with them again.” Zelena says quietly, her expression distant, muting her in unfamiliar ways. “Wouldn’t that be enough? Having loved enough to bring them back, even if it’s different than you wanted it to be, you’d still have them in some way.”

“Zelena…” Regina starts to say, but stops.

Zelena is staring down at her cup of tea, her fingers tracing old patterns, and though there are no physical remnants of her mother, Regina feels with sudden certainty her presence. Somewhere within this house, creeping quietly along wooden floors is her mother, listening in. A prickling fear creeps up the back of her neck, the silence no longer comforting.

It begins to feel immense, _enormous_ , like it had felt when she was struggling to breathe in that car – the dark water creeping up her neck, filling the car, surrounding her, removing everything but the hard sound of her heart before even that fell silent.

And here, in an old kitchen chair, she begins to feel what she had then – trapped to her seat as something large and dangerous filled the space around her, became the silence as she sank deeper.

Shakily, she stands. She doesn’t know if Zelena follows her or not, all she can hear is the sound of her heart thrumming in her ear. Walking quickly down the stairs, she strides across the white cold lawn and to the thin narrow road that will eventually out of this forest to the town, to cement and the buildings and people; to Emma and her son.

She keeps on walking, fumbling a text to Henry who finds her a little ways down the road. But even within the warm truck, moving steadily out of the forest and onto to smoother, clear roads, the fear remains, sitting inside of her like an enormous ocean, dark and wild and restless.

*

The house is quiet when she returns, Henry shuffling quietly behind her, and as she trails into the entryway she fears that the house is empty and is gone somewhere, unreachable to her, without even a cell phone to call her with. The thought is suddenly unbearable, her need for Emma landing on her all at once.

The silence only lasts a moment before the house seems to register the sound of their entry, filtering out to the other rooms, and finally to Emma, appearing suddenly in the hallway, as though materialized from thin air.

“You guys are home,” she sighs, visibly relieved. It pinches inside of her, this quiet nervousness that Emma tries to contain in herself, hiding in the corners of her smiles. “Where’d you go?”

Regina hesitates, unsure if she is ready for the natural progression of her beliefs – for the worried investigation and the final, settling truth, deciding at last if she is right or wrong, both terrible in their own way.

“She just wanted to see me drive,” Henry intervenes swiftly, naturally, as he slides his jacket from his shoulders and pulls off his boots.

Regina can only manage a dry, “Yes.”

“Oh. Good.” Emma tucks her thumbs in her pockets, side glancing Henry. “You drove safe, right?"

"Of course, Ma." Henry smiles, "I just follow your example."

"Alright, smart ass," Emma grumbles and Henry chuckles as disappears up the stairway and into the darkened hallways above them up. Emma waits until the sound of his footsteps disappear behind the door. “How did it go?” Emma asks, gently.

“Good.” Regina sighs; it is a small well of truth in all of this discomfort and unease; she clings to it, pressing gently back against Emma’s arm. “You did well with him.”

From the corner of her eye, she sees something like surprise and relief on Emma’s face and makes a note to tell it to her more often.

"Did you have a good day?" Regina asks, secretly pleased by the sheer domestically of it all, the routine they've already started to build.

Emma groans loudly and rolls her head back. "No."

"What? Why?" From the back of her throat, a note of displeasure hums and Regina rolls her eyes. "Just tell me, dear. I have to hear it now."

"You know that list I was making?” Emma finally sighs and Regina's smile falls away, her spine straightening immediately.

“Yes?” she asks warily.

“Well, Belle was the one asking for it. Now she is putting up a big welcome-back party for everyone who has returned.” Before the words can even register for her, Emma turns towards the small desk beside the front door, picking up a small pile of mail. “Here,” she says and thumbs out a thin white envelope. “You even get an invite.”

Regina blinks and thoughtlessly reaching for it. “Do I need a library card to get in?”

“Oh, uh no,” Emma laughs a quick forced sound. “Belle is the mayor now.”

“Oh,” Regina pauses, and because there is nothing left to say, she moves on, sliding her finger across the tap to open it. The invite slips out easily, a quick read which leaves her entirely unsure of how to feel.

“It could be good.” Emma tries after a while.

"A party for a bunch of dead people, dear." Regina hums dryly, but catching Emma's flinch she hastily  moves on. "And anyway, you couldn't be my plus one."

She frowns. "Why?"

"It's semi-formal. They wouldn't let you past the doors."

“Oh my god - I _do_ own a dress, you know.”

“It is _freezing_ outside, Emma." she scoffs, " _I_ wouldn't let you be my plus one in a dress."

Emma rolls her eyes, but she is smiling, a real smile falling into familiar lines. “So are you going?”

She takes a moment to look over it again, tilting the paper up into the light. It’s neat and formal, following an obvious uniform of text, written to hundred others, other people returning – the many that have woken up and found themselves suddenly alive, unchanged, struggling to find a way back into their own lives.

Carefully, she slides the paper back into its envelope and sets it gently back onto the table.

“No,” she says, “I don’t think so.”

“Regina…”

Regina sighs and closes her arms around her chest, starting towards the living room. “What do you expect, Emma? I’m not even sure if this is something that should be _celebrated_. But even if it is, I’m not doing it with a bunch of people I might have killed.”

Emma comes to a sudden stop behind her. “You don’t think this is worth celebrating?”

Regina sighs and stops at the end of the hallway, the air colder near the kitchen. She thinks of the house she left only a few minutes ago, her sister’s face distant and touched clearly with misery.

“I just don’t know why this is happening.” she gently brushes a strand of hair from her face. “I'm not convinced it's for a good reason. Especially not after Graham.” Not after Zelena, that cold quiet house.

"Okay, I don’t think _one_ incident with Graham is worth brushing this whole thing off as some kind of 'inevitable tragedy'.” Emma’s voice deepens with scorn and puts Regina immediately on edge.

“I’m _not_.” Regina bites back, irritated, “But, save for your silly theory about _love_ , we have no idea what caused this. Or what consequences it will have. Magic always comes with a price, and half the town came back to _life_. You’ll excuse me for sounding a little wary.” Her voice comes out harder than she intends it to, her heart curling in her chest as Emma’s face falls into deep lines of hurt.

“I didn’t say _anything_ about love.” Emma rasps thickly, her voice sounding backlogged in her throat. “I just said – I just meant – that if anything – ” Her breath thins, revving in frustrations, “I’m not saying I know what happened, alright? I just know I _missed_ you and I’m glad you’re back, even though you’re an _asshole_.”

Silence falls all around her and though Regina wants to take it back, smooth the hurt in Emma’s face, but she finds herself watching the silver hand on the clock in the living room, instead, chasing time.

“You want to be here, right?” Emma’s voice surprises her, sounding frighteningly close to how it had that first night, filled with confusion and grief.

Regina immediately steps close, “ _Of course_ I do.” she smooths a hand along Emma’s cheek, feeling Emma’s quick breath brush against the heel of her palm. “You and Henry, your my family. I’m happy to have even the slightest time with you.” Emma nods, but her chin quivers and Regina gently presses her thumb against it. “And if _anything_ , I would want your theory to be true. I would want it to be you.”

Emma closes her eyes, and nods, ducking down to rest her head against Regina’s shoulder, her hands coming up to hold her a moment later. Regina breathes, resting her cheek against the cold shell of Emma’s ear, listening to the snow fall around their house.

“You don’t have to go.” Emma whispers a little later, her voice almost inaudible. “We can just stay in for the evening.”

“Stay in? I don’t know, dear.” Regina gently smiles, “We shouldn’t mix things up too drastically.”

Emma sighs deeply. “You’re such a brat.”

Chuckling, Regina slides a hand through Emma’s long, golden hair. “You must be rubbing off on me.” Against her chest, she can feel the soft quiver of Emma’s laugh. As she pulls Emma closer, she feels something inside of her soften, and give in. “Do you really think I should go?”

“I think it could be good for you.” Emma whispers, gently squeezing. “And Belle thinks it might help the town come to terms with this – whatever it is.”

“Oh, well, if _Belle_ thinks so.”

“Oh come on, Madam Mayor,” Emma chuckles, her body warm against hers. “She could never replace you.”

A warm flush starts low in her belly and spreads to her chest, warming her cheeks. It turns her soft, leaning her closer, closer, until Regina can hear the soft, steady sound of Emma’s heart beating against her skin: a gentle, reassuring presence. She closes her eyes and listens to it.

*

The morning is quiet. Regina is in the bathroom applying with a steady hand the face she wants to wear in front of the town. Emma is already up, making coffee downstairs. She can hear Henry in the other room – maybe getting ready, maybe not – she isn’t sure yet, whether his alliance with her has survived the night.

She finishes applying makeup, careful not to look directly into the mirror, not entirely sure what might be waiting there for her to look straight back at.

Rubbing moisturizer along the bends of her fingers and around her knuckles, she leaves the bathroom and closes the door quietly behind her. She chances a glance back at Henry’s door and catches him looking at her, sitting on his bed, lacing up his shoes.

Pausing, she turns to him. “Are you coming with us?”

He tightens his knotted laces in one movement, lifting up to his elbows on his knees. “I will later,” he says, “I gotta do something first. But…” he rubs the back of his neck, unsure. “Yeah, I’ll come by later.”

She sighs through her relief and disappointment.

“Alright,” she says at last.

Henry hesitates, watching her carefully. “Is that alright?”

“Of course, dear.” After all, it’s not difficult to understand: he is still unsure of her, balancing carefully between his doubt and his hope, waiting for one to win out, to become clearer than the other. All she has to do is wait with him. “I’ll see you later, darling,” she says and walks gently down the stairs.

She finds Emma in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew. Emma glances up at her when she approaches, straightening up immediately. “Hey,” she asks, her hands smoothing down the light blue blouse Regina recognizes as her own. “Is this nice enough, you think?”

Regina doubts the importance of formality for a party of the mostly long-dead, but she won’t begrudge Emma a simple truth if it gives her some pleasure. “Yes,” she smiles sweetly. “You look lovely.”

“Oh,” Emma says, and gently clears her throat, the tops of her cheeks coloring. “You too.”

“Thank you,” Regina slides a scarf around her neck, and smiles. “Shall we go, then?”

“Yeah, just let me pour the coffee,” Emma grabs two large thermoses and the coffee pot. She moves precisely, filling one to the brim with just a splash of milk while the other is filled with far more milk and sugar than Regina would have wanted anyone to know.

“There is no way you remember how I take my coffee after five years,” she mumbles as Emma hands her her thermos

"Madam Mayor, you put a full quarter of milk in there.” Emma chuckles and opens the door. “It’s hard to forget.”

*

The car ride is faster than she anticipated it to be.

Having driven it a hundred times before, she is almost certain there were more stop signs and streetlights to hurdle them, but instead they pull up to City Hall only five minutes later. Emma turns off the engine and glances out into the tall building and its tinted windows, reflecting back images of the sky and parking lot. She cannot see inside at all.

“Maybe it’s empty,” Regina mutters.

“It’ll be fine,” Emma says and pats her hand before unbuckling her seat and opening the door, allowing the cool, sharp air to spill in and chase away the warmth.

Regina sighs and steps out.

Emma opens the door as they both shuffle into the warm, empty area. There is the sound of conversation in the other room, muted by the heavy doors, but just by the sheer sound of its echo is terrifying. She glances behind her to deliberate the possibility of making a run for it.

“Hello, Regina,” Turning around, she sees Mother Superior sitting behind a small desk with a pad of paper out on the desk. There are a pile of name tags beside her. “The check-in is over here. Take a name tag too.”

“I’m sure people will be able to recognize me.”

Blue smiles thinly. “If you’re sure,” she slides the papers away and holds up a pen with only two fingers, a delicate hold that slips away the moment Regina touches it. “Just sign in here. You can mingle in the next room with the others, if you want. Though, maybe not, if they do recognize you.”

A low anger rumbles inside of her, like a slow train approaching a station, rattling through the metal in the floor. She had to breathe slowly to keep it from reflecting back on her face. “I think we’re only planning to stay for a little while,” Regina says and returns the pen sharply. “But thank you.”

“Well. There is a buffet at the end, if you change your mind. An all you can eat." She smiles, thin and gentle and full of hatred. “Enjoy yourself.”

“Wonderful,” she bares her teeth in an aggressive smile before turning swiftly towards the door, striding in large steps away from her, towards the sound of people milling through the door – to just get on with it. To get this over with.

Emma follows quietly, her worry like a loud, visible thing inside of her – Regina can almost hear it ticking, like small gears and cogs, locking up in her hands and joints, keeping her solidly at her side, wondering if this was a mistake. It might be. Inside, people move nervously, aware of her but refusing to look at her, both the dead and alive moving in one gentle stream around her.

One worried look to Emma would have her turning them around and driving back to the house. Regina could be back in her living room in only five minutes, if she wanted to. She could be left apart from this.

But she doesn’t want to be the stranger in all of this. The villain – the one the town bands against. She watches people warily distance themselves from her despite them all having come from the same dark and impossible beginning.

She feels herself stepping into the crowd, instead. Emma follows her immediately and Regina turns, pressing a gentle hand to Emma’s chest.

“Emma.” she presses her hand until she is sure Emma can feel it. “I’d like to do this alone.”

“Wait – what?” Emma’s eyes blink wide.

“Just for a little while.”

“ _Regina_ ,” Emma hissed quietly. “I’m not – I’m not just gonna leave you.”

“I’ll be fine.” she assures, “And it looks like that’s what everyone else is doing, anyway. You can mingle with the other family members.” says, and nods to the people along the walls, all standing stiffly, shuffling through conversations.

Emma’s face becomes even more reluctant. “But I don’t know any of them.”

“We’re a at a welcome back party for the dead, I’m sure you’ll find something to talk about.”

"But – ”

“Go, I'll be _fine_."

Emma crosses her arms stubbornly around her chest but finally sighs, nodding to the back of the room. “Fine. I’ll – uh, just be over there then, alright?”

Regina nods and watches Emma walk away, only glancing back once, and though Regina smiles and waves her off again, her calm is slowly dissipating; when Emma disappears entirely, a quiet panic blooms in her chest, urging her to find Emma again, to close the gap between them. Instead, she turns away, forcing herself to move towards the stubborn, stiff-shoulders of everyone around her, ignoring their silent glares.

After a few minutes, while Regina is moving steadily towards the decision to find Emma again, somebody steps up close to her. A familiar face, the name ebbing just out of reach.

“Miss Mills,” he ducks his head as he shuffles forward, a small smile on his face. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

It’s oddly the dimple that does it. “Billy,” she smiles. He worked for Michael Tillman. He always put new tires onto her car. He had offered to replace them again only a few days before he died.

“I go by Gus now, actually,” he says, extending a hand towards hers, and she remembers his rolled up sleeves and the way he’d always wipe his hands on his pants before he would shake her hand.

She returns his hand shake. “Gus, of course.” She remembers his gentle manner and how he always slapped a towel over his shoulder as he stood to greet her. How, not long after the curse broke, he was found in pieces.

“So.” Gus tucks his thumbs nervously into his belt. “This is weird, isn't it?”

"Very weird," she glances quickly over him again. “Though it's all in good intentions, I believe. At least there are no tacky decorations."

Gus's face squints into an odd smile. “I kind of meant how we're all dead now, actually.”

“Oh," Regina presses her lips together. "Right, of course. That too."

"Sorry," Gus is still smiling. "I guess I don't really know what else to talk about these days. It's all I can think about."

"Well. Better to know how to talk about it." Regina hums vaguely, staring out at crowd around them. “I'm still not sure how to feel about the matter at all, really."

"Yeah, I get that. Not too sure whether I should feel angry or grateful. I am alive again, but..." he drifts off with a good-natured shrug.”

Regina nods, though she is not sure if life is anything to be grateful about if it was stolen the first time; it seems like something she would be forced to smile over, to forgive, like Snow White, still young and foolish, handing back the necklace she’d placed gently around her own neck.

“So...the town didn't...get to you did they?” Gus asks quietly, nervously.

Regina glances up at him with a faint smile. “No. Quite a lot has changed since the curse broke. I wasn't a villain when I died." She sighs, "I just drowned.”

Gus's face scrunches up in horror. "Shit, that sucks.” he says. “When did it happen?”

"Five years ago."

She can sense Gus struggling to put the years together in his head - the ones he lived and the ones he'll never know - and so gently, like one of Henry’s difficult math problems, she helps. "I died about four years after the curse broke."

"Wow. So it’s been nearly a decade for me, I guess." Gus struggles with a difficult smile. "I’d be the age my father was when he had us, if I had lived through it."

Recognizing the tone in his voice, the dreadful what-ifs, Regina gently directs the conversation elsewhere. "Did you come here with anyone?”

"Yeah." Gus' smile lightens immediately as he lifts a hand to cup around his eyes, pointing out into the crowd with his other hand. “My brother Jaq. He's over there,” he says, and snorts. “Ignore that scowl of his – he’s looked at everyone that way since the moment I woke up.”

Regina had to lift her head a little higher to see him above the shoulders of others, but through a short gap of people she finally catches sight of a thin dark man. He stands in the back, his elbows resting on a thin black railing behind him, and though his body looks completely relaxed something sharp and keen looks out of his eyes, watching her carefully.

“Ah,” she says. “I see.”

“He’s just wary, is all.” Gus says, his hand becoming idle, rubbing up and down his arm. “I guess for a good reason. I mean...we barely knew anyone in town. We were just starting to remember our names and now it's _years_ later, and I don't remember any of it."

She watches his hand rub the old weathered patch of his elbow, circling the place where, she knows, skin and bone had been separated. She considers telling him about King George's fate - locked in prison - but she thinks of Leopold, how he crumbled in death, how his fingers curled and became as lifeless as twigs, his skin paper thin. And though he had been reduced, removed from her life forever, it never seemed to make a difference; even after the funeral, after all the years, the harm of him remained.

They remain in silence for a moment, watching the crowds of people from far distant places and innumerable deaths - some sudden and quick and others unforgivable.

After a while, when it started to feel unbearable, Gus gently nudges her. “How about you? Did you come with anyone?”

A soft and unremarkable warmth swells in her, turning her soft.

"I did, actually,” Regina smiles and lifts her head to look out over the small crowd of people, finding the stiff figure in the back after only a moment, her arms still crossed stubbornly across her chest. Regina chuckles warmly, “She’s the one sulking in the back.”

Gus only searches for a moment before he finds her. “The Sheriff?” he exclaims.

“Yes. Though, by the way she is behaving you’d think she was my teenage son.”

“She looks kinda nervous.” Gus smiles. “I’m gonna guess she also gets angsty when you leave her sight.”  

“Every single time.” She says, and smiles when Gus tilts his head back to laugh.

As if hearing her name, Emma’s head turns towards her, meeting her eyes immediately. Her spine straightens immediately, her face growing concerned. Even in the crowded room, in the dim, artificial light, Regina can see the stitch of worry between her eyes; she mouths the words, ‘ _are you alright?’_

Regina rolls her eyes, but gives a small, reassuring thumbs-up.

“Wow,” Gus says with a chuckle. “She’s really worried about you. I didn’t expect that at all.”

“No. I suppose I didn’t either,” she says, but even in her memory Emma had been watchful and frantic and devoted to her. She had been ready to fight for their friendship, though Regina hadn’t expected it even then, much less how to accept it. It had knocked her over, had left her breathless and half in love.

She figured she’d always have time to figure out the rest - how to get what she wants - but she only had those few minutes she spent trapped in her car, sinking to the bottom of the ocean, thinking frantically of all the ways she could still make it home. But she's back...

Staring at her now, Regina feels warmth sting in her eyes. "She's been wonderful." she finds herself saying, almost without her full knowledge. "I don’t know what I would have done without her." Gus looks at her, a warm kind of understanding touching his face and filling the silence between them.

Then the mike turns on suddenly and Belle’s gentle, warm voice filled their silence “Sorry, sorry.” She covers the mike to muffle the bad feedback, glancing through the crowd with a smile that seemed to say ‘I’m still new to this, sorry!’ Regina pinches her lips with disapproval.

“Hello, everyone! I see a lot of familiar faces, thank you so much for coming, and welcome back!”

The conversations dim around her, the crowd shifting forward to listen to the small woman on the stage. Belle continues to speak, but Regina did not listen, disinterested by the bright, flighty language and excitement; she finds herself looking for Emma instead, having lost her with the crowd’s movement. She catches only the briefest glimpse of blonde hair before it is hidden again by the broad shape of shoulders.

Distantly, she can hear the names being called out and the slow walk up to the stage, people smiling and accepting flowers and the brief exchange of words. She can see each sharp, business-like handshake from Belle. And through the shifting crowds of people she spots a familiar coat. Dark and black.

For a moment, her heart stops, recognizing the long hair and thin shoulders, like wings beneath that dark black coat. But as she walks closer to the door, the red in her hair glimmers from the light outside, her face clear and familiar and touched by freckles.

Zelena, _just Zelena_.

And yet. Regina cannot calm her heart. She cannot stop thinking: _why, why is she here? why is she here?_

Zelena is already on her way out, but as she leaves Regina catches her eye. She watches the corner of Zelena’s mouth lift up into a small smile before she disappears altogether – before Regina can sort out the characteristics of that smile, whether it was benign or not. Whether she had come to see her. Or if she had come only to walk around in a crowded room, wearing her mother’s coat.

*

She only has a few moments of staring helplessly at the door before she hears her name being called.

Disoriented, she feels herself being ushered to the front, walking up the slanted wooden steps to the narrow stage, suddenly aware of how tall her heels are. She manages to smile and shake Belle’s hand with a clinical appreciation, accepting her gifts just the same.

The rest moves quickly, then. It is not long before Belle is wrapping up the speeches and directing people into another room where cool light tilts in through the windows and tall, snowy trees sway gently in the wind. In the back, there is already a line forming where the smell of barbecue almost overwhelms her.

And it is more _embarrassing_ than anything, the way her mouth fills with water, the way she starts to move more quickly, joining the rush of the hungry-eyed dead (she’ll never say zombies, never, but even she knows it’s not entirely inaccurate).

She’s already half-way through the line when she feels a body shuffle close, feeling warm next to her. “Hey,” Emma says, brushing a shoulder against hers. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“It was fine,” she sniffs.

“Well,” Emma picks at one of the thin styrofoam plates. “We get free food, at least. That’s a plus.”

“ _We_?” Regina smiles warmly up at her. “Sorry, dear, I must have missed your name on that list.”

Emma snatches a folded napkin with plastic forks and knives, grinning at her. “Sorry – benefit of being your plus one.”

“I don’t recall ever agreeing to that.”

“You did, actually. This morning. When you said I looked lovely,” Emma smiles and brushes a warm hand down her back. "It was a pretty invitation."

Her cheeks grow hot and Emma laughs, wrapping an arm around her to squeeze her close. Regina rolls her eyes, but her heart clatters inside of her like feet on stone steps, loud and light in her ears.

They remain quiet all the way through the line, until food is piled on their plate and they’re left to wander through the room, searching for a place to sit. Well. _Regina_ searches for a place to sit – Emma keeps pointing out empty seats on tables that are already half full.

They finally found a small booth by the window, the space cold and small but empty. Regina slides in and settles down.

“Really, here?” Emma groans and folds her arms tightly around her chest. “There are perfectly good seats out there by the fire places, you know.”

“Yes, I saw them, dear. You’ve pointed them out quite enough,” Regina slides further into the booth to make room for Emma. “They’re also full of people I don’t want to talk to.”

“You were pretty social during the ceremony,” Emma grumbles and slides into the seat.

Regina frowns at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” she sighs.

“Oh, clearly,” Regina scoffs and briskly smooths out the napkins and sets the forks beside her and Emma. “I thought making friends was the whole purpose of this silly thing.”

“It _is_.”

“But?”

“But nothing,” Emma grumbles and petulantly dips a fry into ketchup. Regina watches her sternly, the few seconds of silence that span between them coloring the tops of Emma’s cheeks with embarrassment.

“Okay,” she sighs. “I’m sorry. I just figured I’d be there with you, you know?” The corner of the napkin is wrinkled beneath Emma’s fingers before she wearily smooths it out again. “We’re kind of a team.”

“We _are_ a team,” Regina assures gently. “But I don’t always need you beside me.” To soften the edge of her words, she covers Emma’s hand with her own, feeling the bump of her knuckles against her palm. “I can do some of this on my own. Some of it I need to do on my own, just like sometimes I need you to myself.” She smiles and lightly taps the bottom of Emma’s chin, chuckling as Emma nods, embarrassment crowding the corners of her mouth.

“Yeah okay.”

“Good.”

A few minutes pass filled with easy conversation. Sometimes, even now, Regina is surprised. After all the loss and grief – the five years between– she can still talk to Emma like she had before: with everything to say and yet so much already known.

After a while Regina glances out the window, catching Henry’s large green truck pulling up into the parking lot. Peering through the cloudy glass, she can see the yellow headlights click off, the doors open and more than just Henry piling out, all looking the same in their short hair and heavy coats.

On instinct, her elbow jabs into Emma’s side. Emma groans, “Why?” before huffing and leaning to look over her shoulder. “Oh.”

Henry pushes through the door, glancing quickly across the room before finding their booth. He nods at them with a small, apologetic smile, Snow and David following close behind. Snow glances sharply at Regina before turning to Henry again, talking in a low voice.

“Oh, wonderful,” Regina sighs.

“She’s not going to cause a scene,” Emma assures, but she doesn’t sound entirely convinced herself.

“What is that theory she is feeding our son anyway?

“I think she thought you were an imposter – or used to think that, I don’t know anymore. Kind of hard to believe that when so many others have returned with you,” Emma sighs, idly folding the napkin into halves. “I just think she doesn’t know how to accept this yet.”

“Of course,” she says, but watching her son in that small corner nod along to whatever Snow White tells him is like a slow forming bruise.

Henry slides in a few minutes later, laying his scarf on the table with a breath of cold air.

“Hey, sorry I’m late. Grams caught me as I was leaving and wanted to come along,” he says, his narrow face spreading into a smile. “How was the ceremony?”

The space in her ribs constricts, feeling more close together. He’s still on _her_ side. Even if he’s on theirs, too.

“It was fine, dear,” Regina smiles, heart fluttering light in her chest. “Why don’t you get something to eat? I’m sure there’s still some food available if you want it.” She hopes he goes along with it, craving above all else the habit they had with each other, the simple, mundane things they both shared.

“I already ate,” Henry says, but there is a sharp movement underneath the table and he quickly stands up again, clearing his throat as he ducks a quick glance to Emma. “But uh – yeah, sure, I can get a small plate.”

He jogs away, disappearing behind a curtain of people and the moment he does, Regina juts her elbow into Emma’s side again.

“Ow,” Emma groans and rubs the soft spot between her ribs. “What was that for?”

“You know exactly what that was for.”

“I just wanted to stretch my legs!”

“Then I was just wanted to strech my elbow.”

Emma laughs and wraps an arm around her. Regina rolls her eyes but eases against her again, warm against Emma's side. Sometimes she can’t help but measure their intimacy, the way she might measure a cup of coffee, wondering if what they have could still be more, if these warm touches are all they have or if there is another step – something beyond these measured moments.

“Hey,” Henry says after a while, slipping back and sets down two flutes of champagne. “Belle wanted me to give it to you two – looks like we’re making a toast.”

Regina glances around at the crowds of people, still standing, waiting with glasses in their hands as waiters slide between the gaps of people to pour champagne.

Belle stands in the center, smiling brightly. “I just wanted to make a quick cheers to everyone here: to the people who have returned and to everyone else who is experiencing this miracle with us,” she says and lifts up her flute with thin fingers, holding delicately around the stem. “Welcome back!”

A harmonious “Welcome back!” choroused throughout the room, followed quickly by the sound of clinking glass.

The room is quiet with gentle voices and the quiet, repeating performance of clinking drinks and exchanging kisses. Across the room, Regina spots Gus with his arm around his brother, donning an enormous smile on his face. Snow is leaning against David and watching them with a strange expression. Regina watches until Emma’s arm curls around her shoulders to hug her closer, pressing a quick warm kiss against her temple.

“Welcome back,” Emma whispers softly, and clinks her glass with hers.

“Yes,” Regina says, feeling dazed, and only vaguely remembering to take a sip. _Welcome back._

The moment settles like the light tilting in from the window, stretching out to the corners of the room. People drink their champagne and float into easy conversation. Emma feels warm against her, laughing quietly from something Henry has said, the warmth of her arm still keeping her connected in some way to their conversation. The moment feels full of ease and hope as she leans back into Emma’s arm, thinking again that things might truly be alright.

*

After that, the days pass steadily. There are moments where everything clicks and it seems possible that her life might be working itself slowly through all of its difficulties, finding a way to stretch good moments for longer.

Like moments in the kitchen when the day is coming to an end but Emma will still laugh at every single joke Regina tells, and Henry will laugh at Emma, and the laughter will go on and on, effortlessly into the late hours of the night.

In those moments, Henry will smile at her like he had when she was still alive, like the mother who had kissed him goodnight and combed through every knot in his hair; the mother who had nursed him through every mysterious fever and nightmare; the mother who had been as familiar to him as the maps of countries he now looks over, far away from here, searching for new kinds of happy endings.

And then there are days - moments - when he looks at her like he doesn’t know her at all.

On those days, he will disappear from the house with flowers, out to some place he will not name. On those days, she will avoid the large, empty house and walk along the streets until her fingers numb and her teeth chatter. Until she is absolutely sure she is alive again.

Sometimes the days will be even worse; Emma will come home with a difficult smile on her face; she will avoid any serious conversation before bed where Regina might get a half-answer from exhaustion alone (“there are just a few missing dogs, that’s all”) and find out the rest through a passing conversation on the street. The dogs are no longer missing, she knows, but still just as gone.

On those days, Regina feels trapped by every wary eye on the street.

*

It is a long string of difficult days before anything changes. It is a random invite to a lunch – a guilty impulse from Snow, Emma says, but there is more enthusiasm in her than Regina has seen in almost a week. They all pile into the car with their heavy coats and thick scarves, Emma humming to the radio the whole drive, and Regina catching Henry’s smile from the rearview mirror.

Emma parks the car into a small lot beside David’s truck. Peering out of the window, Regina can see Snow and Charming shivering in the cold air, bundled in their heavy coats with Neal beside them. Some part of her inflates, warming her chest because the moment she opens the door, Neal wobbles down the stairs in his big snow jacket.

“Regina!” He yells with a grin and nearly slips on a step. Snow jolts a few sharp steps closer but Neal is already balancing himself again, struggling down the stairs again.

“Slow down, buddy,” Henry calls out loudly from behind her

“Impossible,” Emma chuckles as she rises from the other side of the car, “Better steady yourself, Regina. You’re about to get the full force of a six year old on you.”

“Oh, I think I can manage,” Regina chuckles. “At least he’s not carrying a heavy backpack.” She recalls how Henry’s small, lithe body dodged through after-school crowds with ease before jumping into her arms with complete faith that he would be caught, back when he could expect only the safety in his mother’s arms.

Stepping clear of the car, she remembers to bend her knees a little in preparation just in time as Neal jumps off the curve of the sidewalk and she catches him beneath the arms, helping him up against her hip. Surprised and giddy at being caught, he presses a bubbling laugh against her neck and she chuckles, hugging him tighter to her.

“Such a silly boy,” she chided lightly and warms his cheeks with hers; his thin arms wrap skittishly around her neck, moving with an edgy excitement, surprised by unexpected affection. She presses him closer – his body as thin and knobby as Henry’s had been as a boy.

“Looks like everyone is already in line,” Henry briskly brushes by them and jogs up the narrow steps.

Regina sighs and watches him go. “That was callous of me, wasn’t it?”

“For what? Referencing the fact that you raised him?” Emma grunts and shoves the door closed. “No. You don’t have to forget your whole life with him just because he’s being difficult.”

The old motherly instinct to defend her child draws her up straight, her heart bruising inside of her ribs with a hard anger.

“This is more than him just being _difficult_ , Emma,” Regina snaps and repositions Neal higher on her hip, stepping up onto the sidewalk. “He is going through something that he doesn’t know how to understand. I had expected a little more sympathy from you.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“If you thought about it, I think you’d find you have been in his position before.” Regina can hear the flat of Emma’s shoes hitting the stone steps a little harder than usual. “Maybe not exactly, but you know what it’s like to not have a mother, and then have her again in the oddest way possible, in a way that you can’t understand. It takes _time_ ,” she says, though she knows Emma hadn’t had it either. (But Emma is a better mother.)

There is a quiet pause before Emma sighs and picks up her pace, shuffling to her side. “Alright, I get it,” Emma sighs. “But I’m not trying to make him the odd man out. I _am_ on his side. I’m just also on yours. I just want to make you both happy, that’s all.”

Regina tries to hold onto her anger, but it gives like a sail without wind because Emma is so _earnest_ in her devotion for them both.

Sighing, she glances up at Henry as they approach the top of the steps, his body turned away from them, his shoulders hunched beneath his heavy coat. “I just don’t want him to feel alone in this, as though he has no one standing behind him.”

“He won’t,” Emma assures gently, “And anyway, he grew up to be a miniature you so I don’t think it’ll take much longer for him to go soft.” Neal’s small chin quivers against her shoulder from the force of Regina’s scoff. “It’s true, you’re a total optimist underneath that hard glare of yours,” Emma grins. “I’ve never seen someone give so many people the benefit of the doubt.”

“Oh come on,” she scoffs, stepping up the last of the steps.

“No, really, I have a list.” Emma shuffles up to her, grinning as she counts the fingers on her gloved hand. “Zelena, for starters, Cruella and Ursula, Snow. You literally gave Robin your _heart_ for god’s sake.”

She glares at Emma, “All of those were failures, let me remind you.”

Emma’s face spreads with her smile. “Well you gave me a second chance,” she pushes a warm shoulder against hers. “Just look how well that turned out, huh?”

Regina hums impassively, but Emma has a habit of warming the difficult spots in her chest, like light struggling through a closed curtain; as they walk up the narrow pathway she feels lightened even as they walk up to a line of strangers, their glares squinting at her through the cool air.

The cobbled pathway is too narrow to walk side by side, but Emma slides close behind her, Neal’s legs dangling at her side. His head rests against her chest where it stays there until Snow turns around to face them again.

“Neal,” Snow calls sharply, “You better get your butt over here quick if you want any food.” Feeling the shift of interest, Regina sets Neal down on the ground and watches him race out the icy gravel to his mother’s side.

Henry glances at her as they move into the line, shivering with David a few steps ahead of them. She almost expects him to leave his place to return to her side, but his face is muddled like rain water in the street, wavering unsteadily between something stony and unsure. He ends up turning around again, facing away from her.

Emma slides an arm around Regina, pulling her close. “Hey, it’s alright,” Emma sighs, squeezing her gently. “He’ll come around. I promise.”

Regina can only nod, walking silently beside Emma as her heart shivers inside her chest.

She had been drifting off, relying on Emma to direct her forward so that she can watch the knee-length grass sway along the cliff’s edge, white birds swooping down close to the ocean, lifting up listlessly with the wind. When she feels Emma stiffen, she looks back, finally noticing the quiet argument occurring in front of her.

There is a thin, weedy man leaning against the counter, his cheeks hollowed and face thin. “ _Come on_ , man.” He groans lowly. “I’m starving.”

“I don’t care,” the man behind the counter snaps, growing agitated. “If you don’t have money, I’m not serving you.”

“I’ve been eating here all my life. You can’t spare just a few crackers for me on my way home?”

Regina glances over at his face, recognizing the hungry look in his eyes. It is an expression she fears in herself – in any reflective surface when the hours of the day get too long or the stretch of time before meals feels expansive. In those moments, she knows not to look at the dark shadows in her face, the strangeness looking out of her eyes, mysterious even to herself.

“Look, I want you out of here if you don’t have money.”

“Come on, man, I’m asking for some _bread_.”

“Well, you’re not getting it, so _scram_ ,” the man says, but his mind is working quickly. He recognizes the hunger on the young man’s face. “I’m warning you,” he says, his hand disappearing beneath the counter.

The man glances down, noticing the flat blade of a knife. Regina can see the rage darken his face, tightening his hands to fists. “You gonna stab me?” He asks. “For some fucking bread?”

“Don’t talk to me that way, boy.”

“Alright, I’ll pay okay?” Emma’s hard voice cuts as she reaches for her wallet, but Regina doesn’t look anywhere else but the man in front of them, his body shaking with an anger that is familiar to her.

He poured his fury onto the counter, remaining still until the money in Emma’s hand taps him on his arm. Glancing down at it, he just shakes his head. “Forget about it,” he says hollowly and slips away, disappearing down the stone steps.

“Great waste of my time,” the man scoffs and turns to Regina with the same look, his face barely hiding his hatred. “You’re not going to give me any trouble, are you?”

It straightens Regina’s spine. It’s the kind of look she received when she was a new bride walking down the aisle in a white cream dress in an unknown place, the sun dark on her skin and her eyes like a trapped, dying animal. But nobody saw that, nobody noticed, their eyes passing through everything except for her skin, passing like steel filaments through her, marking her forever as the dark, foreign-looking girl, the stranger.

“Can you just take our order?” Emma snaps.

He stares at Regina for a moment before slowly looking back to Emma, a short smile appearing on his face. "Sure."

But Regina continues to stare at him, silently as stone, a hard knot of anger forming in her throat. She watches his pale face change in conversation, becoming more relaxed as he talks, but it stays the same inside her head, his white rancorous rage pressed as a red shadow against her eyelids. Food is passed between their hands, but the feeling remains, blowing darkly inside of her, her ribs like a deep shuddering coal mine with life trapping deep inside.

They find the rest of the family by the tables, the wood cold and conversation thin, skirting around important topics as they all eat. The food is warm and familiar, but Regina struggles to swallow it each time, coating the inside of her mouth like dirt. The words, “ _You’re not going to give me any trouble”_ bounced around in her head, the anger perched like a rock in her throat.

After a while, Emma leans against her. “Hey,” she asks. “You alright?”

“Yes.” Regina says thinly. “I’m fine.”

Emma easily recognizes a lie - she knows - but Snow is right across from them, her attention flickering back and forth from David to them. Emma knows to remain quiet.

After a while, Emma leans in to whisper. “Does the food taste off or something?”

“No,” Regina sternly sets down her fork, hoping that is warning enough. “I’m just not hungry.”

It is a normal lie in her memory, but forever odd now because Emma stiffens and the hollow ache of her stomach sharpens – but she can’t make herself eat.

Emma rests a warm, wary palm on her leg that Regina shakes off. Because she is hungry and she is angry and suddenly she can’t stop thinking about the blood stuck beneath Graham’s fingernails, skin between his teeth.

A quake of nervousness creeps down her shoulders and she shivers, standing on shaking knees. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

“I’ll go with you,” Emma says quickly, already standing.

“No,” Regina snaps, harsher than she intends "Stay here."

Emma’s knees bend on instinct, sinking her body half-way back to the bench. Still, in a weak voice she says, “You shouldn’t go alone.”

“Mom,” Henry interrupts and Regina feels the sharp twinge in her neck as she turns to look at him. His words are directed to Emma, but his eyes are focused on her. “Just let her go alone, alright?”

Emma’s face darkens in the cheeks and along the neck, but with a silent dip of her head she sinks back into her seat. Regina aches with the hurt on Emma's face, but still she is thankful for the opportunity to step away from the people she loves.

She walks along the cliff side, the grass waving in the cool air and brushing along her knee as she passes by. She is watching the ocean crash along the cliff, again and again. She does not notice the slim figure walking her way, moving quietly past her, catching Regina by the elbow.

With a sharp jolt of surprise, Regina immediately jerks her elbow away. The hand slips for only a moment before it tightens around Regina’s wrist, tugging her forward. Looking up at the face in front of her, for a moment, Regina doesn’t recognize her at all.

Her face is still sharp and angular, but the skin is paler than usual, pressed tight along her skull from where someone has braided her hair into tight, neat braid along her back. The hollows of her eyes have darkened, lined with exhaustion.

“Zelena?” She falters because for a moment, she isn’t entirely sure.

But Zelena’s mouth moves into a familiar smile, her flat square teeth and the two sharp canines poking out. “Hey sis,” Zelena says her grip tightening, pressing hard along the bones of her wrist. “You certainly are difficult to get alone, aren’t you?”

Zelena tugs again, and Regina stumbles accidentally, her heels sinking into the soft, wet dirt. “Why –” she breathes out in a rush, “You have been following me?”

“Well I couldn’t just walk up to your house and say hello, could I?”

Regina glances quickly across her sharp, tired face. “What do you want?”

“Just a chat with my little sister, that’s all,” Zelena smiles, though the corners are already falling down, exhausted. Warily, she glances behind Regina’s shoulder. “But not here. We can’t be interrupted by that nosy Sheriff of yours.”

“She won’t be able to see us, here,” Regina says and knows it’s true when she glances back to the dark benches, her family like a blurry distant shore line, too far to reach. She turns back, alters her face into something gentle and soothing. “It’s alright, dear. We can talk here.”

Zelena wobbles, exhaling a shaky breath as she shakes her head. “No, no you have to come with me.” She tugs her gently, with less force. Regina doesn’t move at all. “We can talk back at my house.”

Regina looks at her uncertainly. “Why at your house?”

“It’s just… more private,” Zelena says, though her lie is bare and raw on her face, exposed quickly by the guilt that follows, shivering through her. She stands like a statue on the cool grass, staring down at the hand that is still wrapped tightly around Regina’s wrist. “I’m sorry, but you have to. You have to come back to my house.”

In a moment, she understands.

“Ah,” she sighs. Zelena’s potential danger expands past herself and onto the dark shadowy corners of her own house, to the fears she had not dared say out loud to anyone, allowing the knowledge of her mother’s return to exist in some distant place in her mind – much in the way people know of death, certain that it will happen, and yet always taken by surprise when it does.

“It’s going to be fine,” Zelena rasps, her fingers trembling on her wrist. “She just wants to talk to you. That’s all.”

With her hair pulled back so tightly and her eyes watery and bright she looks so young, so scared, and inside Regina’s chest, her heart clatters like a cold kitchen cup, like the that had slipped from her fingers as a child and she had spent the morning picking it all up, burying them in the dirt with her blood just to hide from her mother.

“No, it isn’t,” Regina says. “There is never an end with my mother.” Zelena’s face registers grief the way it does with anger, the same crinkle of the mouth, stitching the same lines between her eyebrows. Regina watches it spread across her face and sighs, “But you must know that by now.”

Zelena goes slack, her grip relaxing on Regina’s wrist. “Well, I won’t drag you there.” Zelena snaps though her volume is lost in the wind, deflating her. She hides her hands into her coat, pulling it closer to herself. “Though, you should be aware…she will only find new ways to get to you. It won’t just be me walking around in her old coat. If she wants to see you, she’s going to make sure that she will.”

She looks away, out toward to the distant shoreline and the small meandering path from where she came. “She can be very convincing.”

“Zelena,” Regina calls after her but Zelena doesn’t hear it or she doesn’t listen, turning away instead, disappearing down along the thin narrow path from where she came as Regina stood there watching her until she disappears completely.

She wanders back to the benches eventually, her family packed up and waiting by the stone steps. When they see her, Snow and David starts walking down, leaving Emma and Henry by the entrance, smiling timidly.

She floats through the whole ride home, unfocused, the quiet conversation in the car as distant as the sky is to her now, trapped beneath metal and miles and miles of space. Her chest feels hollow, as quiet as the rooms she used to live in, a listless anger somewhere around the corner and behind a door where a faint echo drums, beating behind her ears. _Mother. Mother. Mother._

It doesn’t take long for her mother to react. In the morning, with Emma still asleep, she wanders down to retrieve the newspaper only to open the door and feel everything inside of her close like shuddered doors and windows, trapping the small child inside so she doesn't scream, so that she can stare down at the heart on her doorstep with blank eyes, watching as it bleeds a warm spot on her front step.

A white card rests atop, saying, in perfect handwriting: _To my darling_.

*

She doesn’t think – she wraps the bloody organ in the newspaper and drops it into the garbage, grabbing Henry’s keys and driving recklessly to the narrow dirt road that leads to Zelena’s house.

She doesn’t care that her hands are still bloody and she doesn’t bother to knock on the door, following the narrow walkway to the side fence instead. It opens after popping up a tough lock, creaking along the gravel and frozen grass as she stalks out into the backyard.

She finds her mother in a wicker chair on the front porch, unsurprised by her daughter’s sudden entry. There is a cup on its saucer resting on the arm of a chair, held steady by the tips of Cora’s fingers.

“Hello, my dear,” Cora smiles. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Regina doesn’t let herself loose her steam, though she immediately regrets the gardening flats she slipped on in the garage, battered and old, she can feel her mother’s amusement like the ice seeping in from the lawn. Still, her voice sounds strong and firm. “What the hell kind of game do you think you’re playing, mother?”

Her mother laughs, a pleasant thrill like tinkling glass. “Didn’t you enjoy that, dear?” she smiles and Regina feels her shoulders straighten, feeling the same kind of terror she had known as a child, frantic for affection, but knowing it was rarely love that made her mother smile. “I thought it was fun. Just a little joke between the two of us.”

Her knees tremble, but she remains standing. “And just whose heart was that?”

“Oh, darling, please.” Her mother laughs, “You’ve come to scold me on _that_?”

“Mother, tell me.”

She waves a cloudy, impatient hand. “It was just a dog dear, honestly. No need for dramatics.”

“You’re the one who’s been killing the dogs?” Regina travels through the same feeling she had on the streets, walking through the conversations of grief and disgust, the discussion of what might come next. She feels it differently now, as someone standing among them now, talking with them, worrying over the same thoughts and observations, wondering warily about what might come. “And eating them. You’ve been eating them, haven’t you?”

“Well, of course,” Cora presses her lips together as though the question is impertinent and slightly irritating. “It’s too bad all the stores have the same old, frozen meat. I’m not sure how you’ve been managing it all this time.” She sighs and tilts her head up, the cool, gray light sliding across her forehead. “I suppose that is one of the downsides of living again. Nothing tastes _good_ anymore. Not unless it’s just been killed.”

For the first time, Regina actually looks at her mother. She is surprised by how different she looks, how frail, her bones like thin twigs beneath her skin. With her eyes closed, the light touching her face, Regina can see just how much death has taken an appearance on her mother’s skin. It is in the hollows of her eyes, in the grim set of her mouth, and the frail powdery white of her skin.

She resists the urge to touch her own face – to make sure her skin is still firm and smooth beneath her fingers, still feels like flesh. Zelena looks at her from within the house, standing just beyond the milky-glass window. Her expression is unclear, but there is a gentle smudge on the glass from where fingers lifted to thoughtlessly touch the area where she stands.

 _What will happen to you?_ She thinks, and closes her arms across the ache of her chest. She can’t think about that now.

“Well,” she says, and Cora blinks and looks back at her. “Why am I here, Mother? What do you want?”

“Oh, nothing extravagant,” she says, the side of her mouth pulling into a small, cold smile. “I have no use for power, anymore. My old life can have that dream. This time, I just want you.”

She feels her heels sink a little more into the wet, icy dirt, but can do nothing to stop it. _“_ You want _me_?”

Cora continues to smile, but around the edges of her mouth is her discomfort, fluttering like a curtain against an open window. “I meant what I said back then. Before – when, well, when I was dying.” She shifts forward, clearing her throat in a sharp, unfamiliar way, as though to actually clear something away rather than to simply provide its sound: a clear sign of her disapproval. “I told you that you would have been enough for me. And I think it really would have been, if I had lived longer.”

Regina can only stare at her. In the distance, through the glass, she can see Zelena closing the door again, slipping away into some unseen corner. All that remains is the silence, stretching between them like the miles of road she took to drive here, extending on and on.

Finally, her mother continues, nervously filling the silence on her own. “The choices I have made, well – I might have only regretted them for a few moments of my life, but…what the regret that I had felt was genuine.” Cora says gently, but beneath that is the edge of anger; angry at having to explain herself – to be told that what she is might not be enough, that what she wants might be already gone – too old, too sad, too grown to let it happen.

“You want to spend time with me?” Regina asks, and feels the edge of a laugh in her throat, underlying her words, “That’s all you want?”

“Is that funny to you?” Cora snaps, her surprise bleeding quickly into fury.

“Yes,” Regina says, sighing with the end of her laughter. “I suppose it is.” She feels the start of her own smile. “And you think you deserve that?”

Her mother’s face dims, immediately angry. “Well, why else would I be here, darling? Why are _you_ here?” She punctuates her question with a quiet scoff, lifting her cup to take a small, gracious sip. “To be frank, my dear, you have been just as cruel, just as hateful, as I have been. I don’t think _deserving_ a chance factors into any of this.” In her mother’s eyes is a coldness she’s known all her life – a simple glance sends shivers down her spine, urges her, quickly, to look away, look away.

“We’re still both here, though. You and me,” Cora continues, and Regina hears the tone of her voice change, as though there were something beautiful in all this, something precious. “For whatever reason, we are here together now.” Her mother smiles. “Don’t you think that means something?”

“No,” Regina snaps harshly. “I didn’t ask you here. And I certainly didn’t _want_ you here.”

“That has absolutely nothing to do with it.”

“It has everything to do with it!” Regina yells. “You _have_ a daughter who wants you. You have a daughter who loves you. Who might have even loved you enough to bring you back from the dead – doesn’t _that_ mean something to you?”

“Zelena?” Cora asks, genuinely surprised. Slowly, the side of her mouth pulls up with amusement. “Oh, darling, please. Is this another one of your jealousy fits? Zelena is not my daughter. Not really. I hardly know her at all.” Regina closes her eyes, sending a convulsive prayer that the windows are closed and that the doors hold no cracks, that these words may never find Zelena.

“And anyway,” her mother continues after a pause and a gentle sip of tea. “What does love have to do with this?”

Along her neck, she prickles with sudden awareness of the danger in this conversation. “It’s only a theory,” she answers quickly.

But her mother’s caught on, already. “Only a theory, hm?” she straightens primly in her seat, smiling that cold smile of hers. She is three years old again asking about love, the warm hopeful flutter in her heart dying like flowers in the winter. “And just who do you think loved you enough to bring you back, my dear?”

The obvious answer lies in her son. But she hesitates with it, unsure of whether she wants to mark her son solely responsible to this life, for all the pain it has caused him and for all it might still harm him. But to say anyone else – to say _Emma_ , well it opens up a whole different danger.  

As she watches the sly curve of her mother’s smile, she remembers the quiet games her mother used to play. By herself, often. Everyone else was her audience, waiting, easily reading her face, easily her mother can read her. “Surely you don’t think it’s that girl you’ve been living with.”

“No,” Regina answers quickly.

“Oh, but you do,” Cora clicks her tongue. “My dear, you never learn, do you? After everything I’ve done for you. Everything I’ve tried to teach you and it’s been absolutely wasted. What more can I possibly do to _prove_ to you that you are only _weak_ – only _powerless_ – when you are in love?”

Her anger runs against her ribs like a dog against a chained leash, ending against her body with gnashing teeth. She feels for her magic, but it is empty inside of her so she walks closer, instead.

“You will do absolutely nothing,” she snarls. “I don’t care _what_ you want mother. I don’t care what hopes you had for me this time around – whether it was to be Queen or to simply be your daughter again, i _t doesn’t matter to me_. I will not hesitate for a moment to end your miserable life if I think _even for a moment_ you might harm Emma.”

Cora doesn’t flinch, her eyes as cool and steady as glass. “Is that where your loyalty is, then?” she asks, her mouth an ugly smile. “To some low life drifter while you threaten your _mother_? Do you have no love for me whatsoever? ”

She catches the accidental quiver in her mother’s voice, the slip of her tongue, opening her mother’s face to vulnerability. Though the anger in her urges her to make her _hurt_ , beneath that is a soft yet familiar pain, the one she’s known since childhood, wailing endlessly into a closed room, crying for a mother who refused to return.

“I do love you, Mother,” she says and her throat closes tightly, suffocating. “I have loved you even through the worst of it. When you took Daniel from me. When you _sold_ me –” she breathes in shakily, her mother’s face growing sharp with attention. “I couldn’t kill my love for you, but it didn’t _live_ , either. You never gave me that chance. It just grew in me like some twisted thing, like some poisonous plant that _kills_ everything.

“So yes, I do love you,” Regina rasps. “ I loved you _then_ and I love you _now_ , but it doesn’t change anything for me. Not anymore. I will lose you if I have to, if it means I don’t lose Emma.”

Her mother looks stricken for a moment, her eyes gleaming wet, her fingers trembling around the end of the arm chair – Regina gather these details closely, holding them tight to her chest even as they begin to disappear beneath her mother’s already returning calm.

“Very well,” her mother finally says, cool and collected, and Regina doesn’t know whether to feel mournful or angry. All she can bear to do is leave, turning away to the side door, retreating into the front lawn, the cold grass tickling her ankles and freezing her feet.

Stepping up in Henry’s large truck, she catches Zelena watching her through the front window, but she doesn’t pause, slamming the door shut instead. She turns to drive out from the dirt road, out of mother’s reach and away from her sister’s loneliness, from the endless quaking fear in her heart. She drives on and on and on.

*

Regina decides not to tell Emma about her mother. She is unsure of her own motives, but doesn’t bother to question them in the coming days, when violence seems to creep in like the late evening shadows. It can be seen in a broken window as she walks by, the store keeper’s glare blurred through the remaining glass. She can see it in the townspeople’s eyes, sometimes wary, but often only angry.

There are more fights now. Some are minor and most are not (as it turns out, her mother is not the only one taking the lives of beloved pets). It’s impossible to guess which side is more violent: Graham once wrapped his hands around Emma’s neck and left blind marks on her skin; a man came after Regina with a bat and swung for the head.

*

It is by an incidental glance at a passing store that she runs into Gus, allured by the bright display of comic books, she wanders inside to meet the familiar side-long profile of her friend.

“Gus!” Regina smiles, happiness climbing high inside of her as she walks to the counter. He glances up at her and smiles, pushing a dimple into his cheek. But his eyes look tired, slowing everything inside of her. She comes to a stop in front of him, staring deeply at him. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Yeah,” Gus says. The curve of his smile floats up and down around the corners of his mouth like buoys in the sea. “Yeah, it’s nice,” he says and wipes a tired palm over his eyes. “The hours are kind of shitty but I get what I can. I like my boss, at least.” There is a hard edge of anger in his voice, and Regina doesn’t ask why he isn’t working for Michael Tillman, anymore.

Regina glances quickly across the shop trying to find things she likes, but the wallpapers are yellowed with age and the lights above flicker every once in a while, and she knows in the curse - when everything remained consistent and safe – even _then_ , this business was quietly dying.

She touches her hair (a nervous tick she hates) but ends up sliding it down her neck instead. “Well, do you like it here?”

“It doesn’t pay that well. But, it’s still a paycheck coming in. It’s something,” Gus says, still smiling; but something looks out of his eyes, a tired weariness. A quiet, dark loneliness. Some part of her, far deep inside, flickers with recognition. “We’re making it work,” he says, and she knows it’s a lie.

Regina can hear someone scuffling behind her, another customer, but before Gus’s attention can switch, she reaches for him, her hand curling over his. “Come over for dinner sometime, dear,” she squeezes his hand, hoping the grip of her fingers can properly convey itself without feeling measured, an empty gesture to signal the end of a conversation. “I’ll make you and your brother something nice, alright?”  

“Okay,” he says. A genuine smile creeps around the corner of his mouth. “That sounds good.”

“Good,” Regina squeezes his hand once more and sets down her purse. “Now, give me every new edition of Wolverine.”

“The latest one was a few years ago. Henry’s probably already read this stuff by now.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she blushes and slides out her wallet. “Do you take credit?”

“Yes, we do.” Gus chuckles, and hands over a plastic bag. “Enjoy your comic books, Ms. Mills.”

“Thank you, dear,” she sighs and accepts the bag.

As she turns, sliding the bag over her arm, she glances quickly at the customer behind her, at her smooth clear face and the anger beneath it, setting her bones like steel. It’s an expression she’s become accustomed to in the passing weeks and is not in any way surprising, but what makes her come to a stop, her fingers turning cold, is the child beside her, his face an expression of abject terror.

 _I’m a mother_ , she wants to say, _you have nothing to fear_. But somewhere deeper, somewhere farther, she thinks: _you haven’t even seen the worst of me._ She stands there for a moment, watching the mother press her child tighter against her legs and glaring angrily at her, helplessly, until Regina remembers to step to the side.

The space between them expands like a pair of lungs, finally stretching out as the child skirts quickly past her, quickly as though she might try to snatch a leg or arm. As though she were some large, cavernous creature; a ravenous spider waiting just beyond the reach of his mother’s arms.

She leaves for the exit, her mouth aching with the smile on her face, her cheeks stinging with the sudden burst of the cold winter air as she steps out of the store, hate billowing inside of her like dark clouds, a storm whirling inside of her as she walks along the street.

She walks blindly to the Sherriff’s station, only recognizing it by the heavy creak of the wooden door as she opens it and David’s startled frown as she walks inside. But Regina doesn’t look anywhere else but Emma’s open office – peeking out from behind a black, winged chair is the familiar shape of Emma’s shoulders, and so she moves forward, following the urgent need beating between her ribs to be touched, to be held close.

Emma makes a quick sound of surprise when Regina slides her arms around Emma’s shoulders, but her surprise quickly turns into a laugh as she straightens to fill Regina’s arms.

“Ahh,” Emma’s voice is bright with warmth, “You just came in to hug me?”

Regina nods, but a sudden shuddering breath catches in her throat, warming the soft angle of Emma’s neck. Immediately, Emma’s chair slides back, separating them for only a moment before Emma is pulling them back together again, holding her close. Regina’s hands grip greedily onto the back of Emma’s long sleeve shirt, muffling her shuddering gasps between just the two of them.  

“What can I do?” Emma whispers a little while later.  

Regina holds her with trembling arms. “Get me as far away from here as possible,” she breathes.

*

The farthest they can go is a beach at the edge of town.

They had talked of going farther – Regina had suggested it at least - but it fell into a tense silence, Emma looking at her as though she had been hit. “You wanna go where there is no magic?” she had said, her fingers turning white on the wheel; Regina had been absently following red road lines of an old paper map in Emma’s car, trailing them out of town onto the world outside, but watching the tremble in Emma’s fingers made her fold it up and put it away.

She could have pushed it further, she knows.

She could have slipped away the moment they crossed the town line, just as easily as she had the first time. Or she could have walked along the boulevards of a strange city, in a world full of people who had not watched her disappear quietly into the earth, who knew life simply as something that either continued or didn't.

But what she could not abide to was the thought of Emma alone in that car, still driving, calling her name tentatively, only beginning to realize something must be wrong.

“The beach is fine,” Regina says instead and closes her eyes. She lets Emma drive her wherever she likes.

*

The beach is freezing, but empty.

By the time they drive into the parking lot, Henry is already half-done spreading out blankets and chairs in a small spot beside the clear, empty beach. Regina smiles and doesn’t let herself think about the frantic kind of text Emma must have sent him to get him to show up.

As they walk down the wooden path to the beach, she can feel the nervous glances Emma sends her way, always hidden quickly by a smile.  Regina is trying, but the anger is still there, gathering like distant clouds in the sky, hiding any happiness like it would the sun – just some soft removed presence beneath the fog.

They shiver in silence for a few minutes until Henry releases them with a swift, gracious push, sending Emma stumbling back a few steps as he turns and dashes wildly for the water. Emma runs after him, her fake rage ringing out between bouts of her laughter. Regina watches them run, their legs and lungs pumping, fighting through the cold wind and water.

Henry shrieks with laughter when they reach the ocean, Emma splashing the back of his legs and Regina feels her happiness struggling through her again, the way long-lost swimmers fight their way back to shore.

Cupping her hands around her mouth, Regina yelled, “Splash her back, Henry!”

Henry turns to her, grinning wildly, suddenly a child all over again in his delight before he bends his knees and splashes water all the way up Emma's side.

“Hey!” Emma yelps, laughing loudly, and Henry turns to Regina again. He is three years old again chasing her through the house, following her laughter and the sound of her footsteps.

Joy expands inside of her and she yells back, “Tackle her to the ground!”

Emma’s head snaps to her in shock. “ _What_?” She screams.

Henry is more gracious than she would have been. He secures Emma by an arm and a leg, landing her lightly on her back. Emma’s blonde hair lifts up like the loose sand around them, wild in the wind, and Regina watches them smiling, her eyes stinging from the cold and something gentle that rushes against her like water against the sand, lapping at the side of her until she feels light and breathless.

Emma rolls up from the sand with a thin kind of grace, still smiling widely. She jogs up the beach back to her, and Regina presses her lips together to keep from laughing at Emma’s wrangled state – sand pressing into the wet folds of her jacket, her hair wild and sandy, her dark, wet jeans clinging from her calves down.

“You’re in _so_ much trouble,” Emma yells over the wind, opening up her soaked, sandy arms, "Get over here!"

Regina easily dodges her and leaps out across the dry, cool sand. But she doesn’t give much of a chase. With Henry’s laughter booming in the distance and Emma’s scattering footsteps behind her, she wants, in some way, to be connected to it. If it’s by a hug, then, well, a little sand and sea-water isn’t all that much trouble in the end.

She slows and Emma bumps into her, muffling a laugh against Regina’s shoulder as her arms surround her. She can feel the warmth of Emma’s body pressing close, her long, wet hair tickling her skin as she pulls her closer, smiling against her neck.

It is a clumsy hug – there is the grit of sand on Emma’s cheek and the thin puffs of air between them, fingers cold and clumsy as they lock in front of Regina – but something lifts inside of her all the same, her ribs shaking with something large and momentous, with the cool press of Emma’s lips, and the sand rubbing between them, everything she’s wanted and lost stuck somewhere between their bodies and the years, joining in the ongoing rush inside.

Regina cannot speak. She is caught in the clatter of her love and want, in her fear and hope, turning her silently in Emma’s arms. Resting a warm cheek against Emma’s neck, she presses close enough to feel the curve of Emma’s body beneath her jacket and that hard, erratic heart beating against their chests, filling two spaces at once.

Slowly, Emma’s arms tighten, holding her closer. Regina barely has to move at all to press a gentle, warm kiss against Emma’s neck.

Emma's breath tumbles against her neck as shivers all around her and Regina wants more of her, to feel her warm skin against her own. Thoughtlessly, her fingers drag down the hard ridges of Emma’s back, slowly peeling peel up her cold, wet jacket and lay a palm on her warm, blushing skin. Against her neck, she can hear Emma’s thin, uneven breathes.

“Hey Moms!” Henry calls out in the distance and they both jump apart, Emma looking warm and breathless and Regina tingling where Emma’s body had touched as well as the word Mom, reaching out to surround them both. Her heart sweeps high and wild inside of her like a red scarf in the wind, sailing high and far, losing itself.  

“Yes, dear?” Regina manages, watching the quiet embarrassment tint Henry’s cheeks and how he tentatively wipes off the sand and sea-water on his hands and jeans. But the hard knot that usually holds him is loose still, allowing him to continue smiling, to remember a time when it was the easiest thing in the world to have two mothers and love them both.

“It’s getting kind of late,” he answers and nods to the far corner of the sky where dusk is leaking across the water, reflecting back the sky’s pink clouds and darkening light. “You wanna start packing up, maybe?”

Emma just looks at her and Regina just continues smiling, remembering to nod and act as normal as possible.

“Alright,” Emma says after a little while, sounding breathless.  “Sure, let’s go.”

*

They pile into two different cars, both taking with them the sand and water and silence they held in them as they packed. Henry drives ahead of them, his headlights glowing dimly in the late evening, passing along dark, silent roads and the houses surrounding them.

But, in this moment, these dark houses hold no interest to Regina. She cannot look away from Emma, watching carefully for signs of her feelings, hoping to reflect back on her face the expectations she should have for the evening. But her face is as smooth and distant as the streets ahead of them, moving them steadily forward.

It is only when they’ve entered the house and Henry has disappeared up into his room that Emma seems to change at all. When the door closes, she breathes out deeply and turns towards the thin coat rack by the door, unzipping her jacket.

It’s then, as she’s slowly sliding off her jacket that Emma glances back at her, her eyes dark and warm. “Do you want anything to drink?” she asks.

There is that hint in her voice, the want that stretches out of her like a laugh through all of the rooms in her house, gentle and sweet and certain. Exhilaration jolts in Regina, spreading from the arches of her feet to the prickling skin along her neck, warming her skin with the sudden certainty of where this evening will go.

Regina can imagine what she could say next. It could be sweet and flirty. She could follow Emma into the kitchen, drink her wine and wait for the evening to settle, for the right moment to rise so that they can set their drinks aside, no longer needing the aid of a warm buzz.

With her other lovers, these faint, lingering moments before sex had been the most enjoyable, still filled with possibilities before anything settled and became permanent. But with Emma she cannot bear to wait any longer.

Regina knows how to walk silently in heels, watching Emma’s skin glow warm beneath the soft dim of the hallway lights as she makes her slow approach.

“I don’t need a drink,” she says only when she is close enough to feel Emma’s back straighten, a place for her to press against.  Her lips find the back of Emma’s neck, breathing a soft, gentle kiss against her skin. Her hands brushes along Emma’s ribs as she gently grips Emma’s body in her arms, pulling her closer.

It is this touch, a simple push that makes Emma boneless. She breathes out and melts her neck back against Regina, the rest of her body falling against the certainty of the bones and arms behind her. Regina kisses slowly up her throat, reaching her ear to bite and soothe it with her mouth.

She whispers, “Let’s go upstairs.”

“Yeah, okay,” Emma breathes.

*

They don’t make it to the bed. Wanting something hard and flat to press against, to feel every inch of each other, they stretch out on the floor instead, clothes landing in heaps beside them. Emma is breathing hard, her hips working with the rhythm of Regina’s fingers as her mouth brushes soft, open-mouthed kisses on any part of Regina that she can reach: her neck and chin, the long slope of her jaw, bumping her mouth hard against a shoulder.

Regina slaps a sweaty palm on the floor above their heads, accidentally sliding with Emma’s long hair, sharply pulling at her scalp; Emma groans lowly, scraping her teeth along Regina’s shoulder, both too far lost in each other to consider the faint marks they’re leaving on the borders of their bodies.

The air is chilly, filling the spaces between them and prickling across their exposed bodies. It edges Emma’s fingers along the floor to tangle with Regina’s, gently squeezing as she mouths sweet, open-mouth kisses along her neck.

Emma's gentle affection is no longer surprising, but still this love inside of her swells, crashing like a wave against the cliffs, turning white and churning, filling cracks and crevices inside. It makes Regina frantic, her fingers stretching deep to that one spot that has Emma gasping, her lower back lifting from the floor, pressing up to meet her.

“Fuck,” Emma gasps weakly, body arching with pleasure. Regina watches hungrily as her face pinches into an expression completely new and raw, jumping with hard, blissful lines. Slowly, Emma goes limp, breathing heavily into the chilly air above them.

Regina sighs and slowly slides off Emma, stretching out across the cool wood floor. Emma is still quivering, struggling to regain her breath as they lie out side by side on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.

The cold fills the empty of air around Regina’s body, in a small ball on her back and in the space between her arms (where Emma should be).  

So quietly, after a moment, she leans the length of her body against Emma, her arms grasping weakly around her waist. Emma’s face slowly crinkle into a smile, her eyes still closed.

“I didn’t know you were so cuddly.”

“I am _not_.”

Emma’s hand travels up Regina’s arm, “You kinda are.”

Regina tries to protest, but her words get lost in the painful crack of her voice so she decides against making a point at all, leaning instead, towards getting what she wants. Nudging with her nose, she drops a gentle kiss on the underside of Emma’s jaw, feeling the faint quiver of her skin.

“In any case,” she whispers. “You’re making me do all the work.You’ve got two arms of your own, if you remember.”

Emma laughs deeply and wraps around her, pressing her lips against Regina’s temple. “You’re such a dork,” Emma smiles, still breathing raggedly as she squeezes weakly with her arms. “Satisfied, yet?”

“Mmm,” Regina nuzzles against Emma’s chest. “It will do.”

They lay there for a little while, the last of the evening light resting in long rectangles on the floor, touching the tops of Emma’s feet and along the long arches of their backs. The cool air gently exposes the pleasant aches in their bodies, soft red bruises left on their skin like seashells on the shore.

A warm hand slides down her thigh, Emma mumbling quietly. “Wanna go again?”  

“Yes.” she sighs, smiling.

Emma lifts them up into a sitting position, pulling Regina onto her lap, sliding a hand between her thighs. They rock against each other, their bodies seeking a rhythm that works for the both of them.

As they’re breathing raggedly against each other, Regina still following the motion of the fingers inside of her, she hears Emma’s quiet gasp, “I still can’t believe it, sometimes.” Glancing down, she finds an expression of pain and joy in Emma’s face, the creases around her eyes wet with tears.

Regina knows. She understands. Her hands grip Emma’s shoulders painfully tight to help their movement, bringing them closer together each time.

“I’m here.” Regina assures, “I’m here.”  

She says it again and again until it gets lost in other noises, in their quiet, desperate moans, in their gripping arms as they wrap around gentle rocking hips and shoulders – holding each other up, holding them together.

*

They make it into bed hours later. Emma is sleeping quietly, splayed out across Regina, the shell of her ear touching the hollow of Regina’s throat as they rest against each other, bones against bones.

Regina is half-dozing beneath her, watching the morning light touch the clouds outside as Emma’s musky warmth surrounds her, the smell of sea-water and sweat. It’s the closest thing to sleep she’s felt in a while.

It’s still early and the house is quiet and so Regina does not expect the gentle knock on her door. Blinking, she watches blearily-eyed and sleepy as the door slowly opens, her son’s head popping in.

“Hey, would you – _Oh._ ”

Regina jolts up, frantically grabbing the cool sheets left around their waist to cover themselves up. Emma is dead weight on top of her, _of course,_ but she manages to wrap the sheet over Emma’s shoulders and over her legs, tucking it in around her own body, holding Emma’s head close to her neck just in case those marks are visible in this light.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” Regina asks hoarsely, voice cracking embarrassingly. “Are you – are you okay?”

“Um,” Henry’s voice wobbles uncertainly, and even with his head turned completely away from her and his hands covering his eyes, she can see the bright red of his cheeks. “Yes. Sorry. I shouldn’t have come in. I’ll…I’ll just come in a little later.”

“What is it?” Regina asks because it’s early in the morning and her son has never once come to their room, not once since she’s woken up. And though she wants the door to close again, seal her back into the warm forgetfulness of the room sleep – her son is acting unpredictably. Something unexpected threatens the air between them.

Henry draws a deep breath, his hand still covering his eyes. “I was wondering if you would help me with something.”

“With what?”

When Henry remains quiet, Regina nearly stands to get a better look of his face, put his expression against the ones still there in her memory, to understand him better, but Emma’s weight presses her down, a gentle reminder to the cool sheets along her bare skin.

Finally, she says, “Alright. I'll go with you.”

“Really?” Henry looks up, his surprise pushing his hand up along his hair. “You will?”

“Yes,” Regina smiles, because though his face is still blushing red, she can hear the steel-toned hope and fear in his expression.

He nods, and clears his throat. “Um. Would you – would you mind going now? I know it’s still kinda early but it’s the only time we can go.”

Regina feels the sharp desire to ask _where_ , but she knows any further pressing might turn Henry away, tighten the knot that usually holds him still.

“Alright,” she says instead and smiles when Henry’s face wavers with something too enormous, too large to hold back. He remains there for a moment, standing by the door, struggling, and though she wants to go to him, hold him, she also desperately needs to get dressed.

“Henry,” Regina says after a while, Emma shifting quietly against her. “I’ll need to get ready.

“Oh, right,” Henry’s face floods with embarrassment. “Right, right,” he says and quickly turns, nearly bumping into the door as he leaves the room.

Regina sighs deeply and allows herself a moment to collect herself again, to feel the small comfort of the room: Emma’s skin and even breathing, the early morning light touching the far corners of the room, the gentle, absentminded warmth of their tangled fingers.

“I think I was wrong, darling," Regina whispers to Emma's forehead. "You’re worse than a rock.” She kisses her gently before easing out from the warmth of their bed, walking barefoot along the floor the floor to Emma’s wardrobe, quietly dressing in warm clothes.   

They leave the house quietly, Regina locking the door behind them before they both climb into Henry’s truck. Henry blasts the heat, though it doesn’t make the leather any warmer against their legs, sticking to them like ice on the streets. Regina watches the town pass by her for a while, watching it in its silent slumber, the windows dark and the roads empty.

She doesn’t ask where they are going; she waits for the road to become familiar instead.

When the grassy hill steadily grows steeper and opens up into the entrance to the cemetery, she is somehow unsurprised.  Graves stand as sleek, tall markers against the grey sky and dark plotted earth. Slowly, Henry parks at the side of the road through the iron-wrought gates, the sound of his wheels over gravel rumbling loudly around them.

There is a moment of silence between them, the cold morning light drifting in through the windshield in thin, watery beams. Finally, Henry clears his throat.

“So,” he says, breathing in deeply. “I guess you know that I’ve felt really…um…uncertain about everything.”

“Yes.”

“And…” His mouth twists to the side, and she knows to remain silent, to not guess his words before he can finish them. He has difficulty the way Emma does with reaching the words inside of him, plotted the way roots are beneath dirt. “I don’t want to be unsure anymore. I think – I think you really could be her. You seem like her, at least. It seems possible.”

Regina watches his fingers knot around the wheel.

“But it’s been five years.” He rasps. “You’ve been dead for so long and I don’t know how to believe in anything else. I believed you would once. When you were just missing. You were just someone who disappeared beneath water, I didn't care that no one saw you come up. Emma said it was possible you would still be alive and I believed her because I was thirteen and still thought good things happened to good people.”

His rough, raw fingers tightened around the wheel as if pressing blood through his hands might keep the emotion from his voice. “And then we found you. Washed up on the beach just a week later. And I couldn't believe anymore, I couldn't believe anything anymore, but I was still just thirteen and growing up without you. And the only thing I have had of you is _this_. Just a plot of dirt. I came here once every week for _five years._ And even more, since then.”

Regina’s voice sounds scratchy in the silence. “What do you need?”

Henry wipes his cheeks with a rough palm. “I just – I need to know. I need to know if that little plot of earth is still all I have of my mom or if I’m just talking to an empty grave now.”

Regina understands. For a moment, she is completely silent, staring out into the cold grey morning as Henry waits. His thumb slides back and forth along the worn leather of his steering wheel. He is waiting for her permission, she knows.

A part of her wants to say no. Keep this a mystery; leave her coffin just a cold dark box beneath the ground, unopened. But a larger part of her wants her son’s long tiring journey to be completed. For questions to finally be answered.

“Alright,” she says at last.

“Alright,” Henry sighs heavily.

Her grave is near the top of the hill where the ground is wet and icy beneath their feet; beside her headstone are all of the flowers Henry has set out in the last month, slowly frosting over.

The edge of the shovel wavers gently above the quiet mount of dirt before he sets it in deep, ripping open the earth. Regina stands uneasily beside him as he works, watching the soil go from an icy brown to black, smelling cold and icy, she waits for the moment the earth turns to wood and Henry can finally stop digging.

She hears the hard metallic clunk only a few minutes later, halting them both. Henry draws away, looking down at the wooden coffin still hidden mostly in dirt. Regina doesn’t dare look; she hears it creaking open as she’s staring out toward the bare branches, dark and empty-looking against the sky. She doesn’t turn until all the air in Henry’s chest pushes out from inside of him.

“What is it?” she whirls around, watching Henry’s face frantically.

But Henry doesn’t react. He only stares down at the coffin, his face pressed clear of any emotion. Numb, uncomprehending. And then slowly, he looks up to Regina.

“It’s empty,” he says.

“Empty?” she whispers.

Slowly, he nods and shivers, as if only now realizing he is standing in a cold pit of earth. He trembles before he pulls in a deep, shuddering breath, his face opening like a door to the grief of a thirteen year old.

“Mom,” he shudders and Regina pulls him into her arms, holding onto him the way she did when he was a child, his spasms just as frightening to her as they were then.

She knows only to hold tighter through her terror, waiting for those frantic gasping breaths to break, shuddering suddenly into something else - bright and warm and breathless. She holds him tight, through all his bright watery laughter.

*

It’s nearly an hour later when they finally come back to the house. Henry is still wiping the tears from his face, running along the dirt smeared on his cheeks, his body turning shy in the quiet between them. But still, he is smiling.

It’s still early in the morning and so she sends him back to bed with a gentle kiss on his cheek. He ducks his head, blinking back tears again, but happiness is blooming in the curve of his cheeks. He nods and disappears quietly into the rooms upstairs.

Sliding off her coat, she hangs it on the rack and glances around the house, still dark and silent. She is about to creep back upstairs to rejoin the warmth of Emma’s bed when she catches a faint glow of a lamp down the hall. Walking silently, she finds Emma half-asleep in a chair in the living room, a cup of coffee balancing loosely in her hands.

“Hey,” Regina smiles, approaching the chair quietly. “What are you doing down here, dear?”

Emma blinks, blearily rising up from her seat. Her coffee cup tilts on her lap, nearly spilling until her hands tighten around it.

“Oh right.” Emma sighs and sets her coffee cup warily on the corner of the table. “I just noticed the car was gone. Thought I’d wait up for you.”

She feels a sharp pinch of guilt as she recognizes the hard set of Emma’s mouth, the barely noticeable tremble in the corner.

“Henry wanted me to help him with something,” Regina says, and gently lifts the bottom of Emma’s chin with the tips of her fingers. Slowly, she presses a soft, sweet kiss against her mouth. Emma’s sigh tumbles on her lips.

“Oh,” Emma looks down at her coffee cup, smiling. “I thought maybe you were regretting...”

“I know,” Regina whispers gently and leans in for another soft kiss. “I don’t.”

She means it to only be a quick touch of the lips, but Emma leans into it, deepening it with the gentle press of her teeth, tongue flicking against the bottom of her lip; Regina hums, and pulls her closer, Emma's warm hand sliding around her neck.

They make out slowly in the small cold living room.

Slowly, something settles inside of her. A realization, neither large nor surprising. She might have even known it the moment she stepped into this house, into the cold kitchen with an empty fridge and that raw, bare look on Emma’s face, her grief shaping her like the bones beneath her skin.

But it is this soft gentle kiss that makes her suddenly certain - like the firm touch of Emma's forehead now, gently resting against her own - that her death had killed Emma. It took away something, and now they're both dead and alive, looking in each other for a way to come back again.

There is something dangerous about it, Regina thinks, having a bond like this. There is something vaguely dooming about it.

But still, her heart beats with a warm hopefulness. _I’m here,_ she thinks _. I am alive._

 _"_ Let’s go back to bed,” Regina whispers against Emma's forehead.

Emma nods once, relieved.  

In bed, Emma falls asleep quickly, warm and solid against her. Regina remains awake, watching the steel-toned light touch the far corners of their room, the wind worrying the thin tree branches against the window pane, the quiet sounds of the house around them. Within, something warm and soothing surrounding her, like the steady sound of Emma’s heart beating. Regina closes her eyes with something like sleep.

*

The next morning Emma wakes to a phone call, her face draining of color. A body found in the street.  Stripped of flesh. Eaten.

The car ride to the hospital thunders in silence.


	3. the fire drowned

Emma is already breathing assurances to her father on the phone by the time they parked at the hospital.

“Yeah, I know what it looks like,” she says as she slams the door shut. The hospital doors open in one sudden movement, the cool air surrounding them smelling like medicine and plastic.  “Okay, slow down Dad. I’m already half way there. Just let me find out who did this first, alright?”

There is a short pause, a shifting of breath as they continue down the hall; the small muscles in Emma’s jaw clench tight. “ _Yes_ , Regina is with me.”

When Emma hangs up, Regina says, “I shouldn’t be here.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Emma grumbles, angrily shoving her phone in her pocket. “You don’t have to do anything for them.”

“They’re afraid, Emma.”

“They shouldn’t be. Not of you. They have no reason to be.”

Regina doesn’t say anything more, but as they walk, their steps seem to echo the answering fear like a moth bumping along all the walls, returning inevitably to the bright, painful thought of: _not yet_. _When_? Emma must feel it too because her hand slips into hers only a moment later, gripping tightly as they walk down the hall. Regina squeezes twice and doesn’t let go.

*

In the morgue, the body lies flat on the metal slab. Regina only glanced at it briefly before looking away, watching the light flicker above their heads instead. Emma is taking notes; she can hear it from the faint scratch of her pencil and so she focuses on that instead, the quiet, steady sound. It keeps the sight of the body away, flickering to some distant corner of her mind. She doesn’t think about the blood or the places where the sheet sinks down the way her heels would on soft hollow ground.

No, think of Emma instead. Think of Emma. The cold bright day they had spent on the beach, the sand and sea-water between them, how the wind had lifted up her blonde hair like the sand. Closing her eyes, she thinks of her until the sharp ache in her stomach becomes distant and shallow. A rainy puddle instead of the ocean.

Distantly, she can hear footsteps approaching and voices muffled through the heavy door. As they approach, Regina recognizes Blue’s sharp voice. “We should have been keeping a closer eye on them.”

“There is no way to watch all of them,” a softer voice answers. “And we still don’t know who is responsible.”

“We know which of them are _dangerous_ ,” Blue says as she steps through the door, her voice was clipped and steady as her heels on the floor. Belle glances into the room, freezing as her eyes find Regina’s for a brief, fleeting moment as Blue continues. “We need to review the list again. We will check with the violent ones, first.”

Blue sees them only a moment later. “Well,” Blue smiles coolly. “Don’t you have good timing?”

“She’s not here to be interrogated,” Emma slaps her notebook closed, sliding it back into her pack pocket. Her face is calm but her body hums with tension, tightening in her shoulders and arms. “You got a whole list of more probable suspects and you damn well know it. Go interview Graham if you want to be productive.”

“We already have,” Blue’s mouth ticks up into a neat smile. “He’s still staying with Snow and Charming, who have rules and a lock on the outside of his bedroom door, just in case. I’m assuming you haven’t taken the same precautions?”

“No, I haven’t,” Emma snaps.

“Then you wouldn’t mind me asking a few questions.”

Emma glances back at her, her mouth set with anger but her brow beginning to crease with worry.  Regina understands. She has devoted years of her life protecting her family from the large devastations – the sweeping curses and cold murder – and punished horrifically for not thinking of the little things instead. The absentminded mistakes. The quiet violence. Regina can see her thoughts running quick in her mind, wondering: _how can I save you from this?_

“I know this may be difficult for you, Sheriff,” Blue started and Emma whirls around to look at her, eyes hard enough to make even Blue step short. “But those that have returned…we have to admit that they’ve changed. They’re not the people we lost. They’re not the people we missed.”

“Yeah, I haven’t see anyone come back for you,” Emma stands tall and erect against the woman across from her. “I don’t see you missing anyone all that much, actually. I think you just want to screw Regina over. Look at her – this guy was attacked only an hour ago _, maybe_. Do you honestly think she’d have time to clean up this well if she killed him?”

“For her, easily I’m sure,” Mother Superior says, lips pressing tightly together as she peers absentmindedly over their shoulders to the wide glass behind them, the body still covered. “But with gore like this, there are always remnants. Things she couldn't have gotten rid of: beneath the fingernails or between the teeth. Details too small to hide.”

Emma steps in front of Regina like a closing metal gate. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“Well,” Blue smiles thinly. “Then there’s no harm in asking a few questions, is there?”

“Fine,” Regina sighs.

Emma twists to look at her, aghast. “ _Regina_.”

Regina is just tired. Tired of being in this room, tired of waiting for arguments going on without her to decide on what she will do, tired of feeling the dead pressing up against the window behind her.  

“It’s fine,” she says and doesn’t look away from Blue, her expression contained in the small twitch in the corner of her mouth. “Just lead the way, dear.”

*

They lead her into a small white room with nurses already waiting for them. Regina sits down beside the small window, staring out at the pale sky as a nurse begins to unpack a small bag of strange, sterile utensils, setting them out onto the cold metal slab beside her.

As the nurses approach her, she can hear Emma’s worried questions and their quiet, impatient answers, but the only thing Regina can focus on is the cold plastic touch of the nurse’s hands along her chin and hands, holding her fingers still and her mouth open, shining a hollow yellow light along the backs of her teeth.

The nurses do not press any harder than they need to, their touch continuously gentle, but there is something in their touch that makes her shiver, something dehumanizing; if she closes her eyes, she can imagine the soft powdery hands of the king instead of their own. If she looks at them, she might find a smile from Snow White on their face, pitying and self-assuring. She does neither, watching the ceiling instead as a kernel of hatred sits in her throat.

Finally, the nurses step away with clear answers in the press of their lips and Blue sighs. “Very well,” her mouth settles with disdain. “You’re no longer a suspect.”

“Great,” Emma grumbles. “Can go now?”

“No. I still have a few questions.”

It is in no way surprising, but still, it never ceases to irk Regina how innocence is either worshipped or ignored. “What could you possibly learn from me?” She sighs and tries her best not to fidget in her chair, the cold metal pressing uncomfortably against her legs. “I was with my family all night yesterday.”

“You might be able to point us to the one responsible for this,” She takes out a small writing pad as she speaks in a tone of casual condemnation. “Have you been in contact with any others?”   

“Oh yes, I’ll be sure to invite you to our next lunch.”

Blue doesn’t look up from her writing pad, “You can evade my questions all you want, but there are some things we already know. Like your relationship with Gus. I know he’s been struggling to support himself and his brother. I know you left your house early in the morning, and I know you didn’t come back until almost an hour later.”

Regina’s heart curls like dry leaves in a fire, burning quickly and closing up with its smoke. “Gus has _nothing_ to do with this,” She sneers, though she knows it will not matter. Innocence never seemed to make a difference when it lives in someone just struggling to hang on; she remembers what it felt like as a child, her heart still warm and red like a bird fluttering in her chest, everyone just watching as the world pushed in, wreaking havoc on her ribs.

“Well. We will just have to see about that, won’t we?”

Regina’s hands shake in her lap and she looks out through the window to calm herself again, slow the quick growing rage inside of her. Even without blood on his hands, Gus’s innocence would be hard to prove without the Sheriff standing in his room to rattle against each word. She would need to provide a threat more dangerous than Gus...

Drawing in a deep breath, her hands clench into her lap, fighting back the love that lives like thin, suffocating roots in her heart. “I think…” she starts, feeling breathless. “I think I may know who did this.”

“Really?” Mother Superior lifts an eyebrow. She had not expected cooperation. Regina can sense from the hard lines forming around her mouth that she had not entirely wanted it. “Who?”

“My mother."

The room settles in complete silence.

“Cora?” Blue asks after a moment, her voice sounding thing. Regina nods and she taps her pen against the page, preparing. “Very well. What’s her location?”

“With my sister,” Regina whispers and Blue nods, the room filling with a mild commotion as the nurses and Blue leave, the sound of their conversations trailing behind them.

Emma stares at her, a vacuum hush surrounding them as the doors close. Regina stares out of the small window into the cold white sky and the distant trees below them, trying not to think of her mother and sister hiding in a cabin between, soon to be turned inside out. Scraped clean.

“Your mother came back?” Regina looks up to find her still in the distant corner, standing stiffly. “When did you find out?”

“A few weeks.”

“ _A few weeks?_ ” Emma shakes her head in disbelief. “You have known for _weeks_ , and you didn’t tell me?”

Regina purses her lips as something tough and stubborn inflates inside of her, lifting up between her lungs. “I don’t owe you every one of my secrets, Miss Swan. I didn’t know what you would do with this information so I kept it. If you remember you are my friend, not my _keeper_.”

"You didn't know what I would do? I'd be on your side, like I always am."

"Well I wasn't so sure. I didn't want to give her up just yet, considering what happened last time."

Emma caves fast, her eyes blinking back an emotion too large to hold back completely.

“Okay,” Emma says at last, nervously tucking away her long blond hair. “I get it. I know that what you have with your mother is complicated, I shouldn’t have expected you to just tell me everything. I’m sorry.”

After a deep breath, Emma says. “This is just – this is _huge_. I thought the town was enough to worry about, but now…God, now there is just so much, and I don’t know - I don't know if I will be able to protect you from all of it.”

Emma looks at her like she had that first night, body pressed against the counter while something enormous opened all around her. She had acted quickly then – resting it all on her shoulders, but now she trembles.

“I know,” Regina whispers and opens her arms to her again.

Emma has to maneuver around the chair a little, pressing her hip against the metal arm so that they can align their bodies close together. She lays her forehead along the curve of Regina’s neck, wrapping her arms around her shoulders.

Regina can hear the soft-roughness of Emma’s voice, muffled against her loose shirt. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” Emma mumbles. “But please trust me.”

Turning her head, she rests her cheek against the cold shell of Emma’s ear. “Alright,” she whispers.

They stay like that for a little while, silent except for the sound of the rubber soles of the nurses’ shoes outside the door, passing along long, distant hallways. Regina closes her eyes, Emma’s breath warming her neck.

Eventually, Emma squeezes her gently. “Do you think – do you think maybe I’m a little more than your friend?”

Regina sighs and slides a hand up grip the back of Emma’s neck, gently encouraging her closer. “Yes,” she whispers against Emma’s mouth, kissing sweetly. In the cool hospital room, they make out slowly, resting against each other.

*

They bring her mother back in handcuffs. There are two sturdy men on either side of her, guiding with their large hands and presence, but she follows them without struggle, looking wan and sallow as she walks down the hallway. Regina shivers, watching her from the safety of a shadowed doorway.

“She doesn’t look so good,” Emma whispers at her side. “Did she look like that when you saw her?”

“No,” Regina answers dryly. “She didn’t look quite so….” She can’t say dead, so she doesn’t. She leans against Emma instead. “I wonder what they did with Zelena.”

They don’t wonder for long. In the distance there is the sound of struggle, the loud clatter of footsteps and shouting. Above all the noise and movement is her sister’s sharp voice, sweeping high and clear above the rest. “You unhand me right this minute! I have a right to see my mother, you can’t just take her from me – _let go of me!”_

“Fuck,” Emma sighs, but Regina is already stepping out and walking down the hallway, turning the corner. Her sister is half bent over the counter with her hands locked behind her back and plastic wire around her wrists, an agitated security guard holding her down as she squirms and yells against the nurses’ desk.

Somewhere along the struggle, Zelena finds her. Her eyes flutter wide, her narrow face spreading into something that vaguely resembles relief, and it jolts something inside Regina. Straightening, she stalks forward with all the authority of the town’s mayor.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she snaps, and though her position has likely been filled for as long as she’s been dead, the security guard still releases Zelena and shuffles back a step. Zelena, with all her fury and motion suddenly released, nearly falls on her face, but Regina catches her quickly by the arm.

“I wasn’t going to fall,” Zelena grumbles, but still uses all of Regina’s weight to help her straighten up again.

Carefully, Regina settles her sister back against the counter, glaring up at the security guard. “Was the plastic wire really necessary? You already had her pinned to the desk.”

“She kept trying to scratch my face,” the guard grunts. “Got sharp fingernails.”

“Zelena,” Regina sighs.

“Whatever,” Zelena mutters and glares moodily down at her shoes.

 _Silly child_ , Regina thinks, but she still helps her up from the counter.

“I’ll take it from here,” she says and the guard nods, watching them as they walk back to Emma, an odd smile on her face. Zelena leans her body against hers.

“You want me to cut the wires?” Emma asks when they’re close enough. .

“No, let’s not,” Regina says, Zelena still against her. “I like your face enough without scratches on it.”

“That’s not very nice of you, sis. I wouldn’t dare think of hurting your dear Sheriff,” the light tone of her voice seems to give away by the end, deflating her entire body until her thin shoulders sink against the wall. “What are we doing here?” Zelena asks wearily.

Regina doesn’t look away from her sister’s eyes, but she can feel the tension of what she has done –these white walls like a cage closing forever around her mother. Zelena would not have to stay, she knows. But her mother will remain, and Zelena, struggling to breathe beneath the love in her chest, would be trapped here with her.   

The space between them rings with silence. “A body was found yesterday,” Emma eventually answers, glancing nervously at Regina, but she doesn’t know if a lie will make any difference, so she says nothing. “He’s- um - been eaten. The same way the dogs had been. They think it was your mother.”

“But how did they know we were here?” Zelena asks, and doesn’t look away from Regina. The answer sits plainly in the silence between them but Zelena waits, watching until Regina has to look away. Her mouth curls into a sneer. “And yet somehow _you’re_ her favorite.”

Regina turns away to stare down the long silent hallway, the walls a bright white all the way down into the dim corner where her mother sits behind a door and a small window, surrounded by nurses. She cannot see what they’re doing, but she can imagine the restlessness in her mother, standing perfectly still with a hateful smile on her mouth as white plastic hand press around her face their own kind of hate.

She cannot save her from this – she is not sure if she wants to – but still, she walks forward.  

The window is small. Through the huddle of nurses she can see her mother’s face, staring defiantly ahead, refusing to look at anyone even as a woman grips her jaw tight enough to open her mouth. She stares out into the window with sharp, seeing eyes, and it’s with a sudden prickling fear that Regina becomes aware of her mother’s attention, watching her carefully with an expression she has feared all her life.

Instinctively, she steps back and nearly bumps into Emma. “You’re okay,” Emma whispers and knows not to try and hold her while her mother watches them through the glass.

The inspection lasts only a few minutes later and ends in agitation, the nurses stepping away with tightly pressed lips, sliding off their white plastic gloves. Her mother remains completely motionless, but even through the glass and space Regina can see the small curve of her smile. It takes a moment for Regina to fully understand, settling like cool, icy air: it is not her mother.

Blue walks out quickly, her frustration struggling to hide in her tightly formed smile. “Well, it appears it’s not your mother, either.”

Regina has no idea what else to say. She is caught by relief and horror.

“Great,” Zelena snaps. “Can we leave, now?”

“You’re welcome to leave anytime,” Blue barely glances at her, already turning to Emma. “We’ll need to put Cora in the jail for the time being, just while we search for an empty space in the asylum.”

Regina stiffens. “You said it wasn’t my mother.”

“Yes. But we can’t just let your mother walk free.”

“Why not?” She snaps though it’s the same answer as always - guilt and blame seem rarely connected in the constant drawing of sentences, grabbing handfuls of people’s lives, uncoordinated.

“Regina,” Blue tips her head down, smiling knowingly. “You must have expected this. We can’t let someone as dangerous as your mother wander around on her own free will. Not unsupervised at the very least.”

“She’s _not_ unsupervised!”

“ _Zelena_ is a prior villain and has done nothing to either redeem herself to the town or involve herself with it,” Blue says, distractedly taking out the flat silver of her phone, quickly unlocking it as she distances herself from the conversation. “She is not reliable in the least.”

“I’ll take her, then,” Regina says, and doesn’t let herself think about what she’s said, even as Emma shifts nervously beside her and Blue looks up into her eyes, shocked.  

“You would take her?” She echoes, incredulous. “Really?”

Regina stands tall, unrelenting even as the idea opens a sharp horror inside of her. Her mother in the same house with her again, becoming a cage, holding all the cold empty silence and quiet horror that it has held before, waiting tremendously for the doors to open and for her father to laugh and save her for once.  

She can feel her mother staring at her through the glass, and though she doesn’t dare turn to look, love stirs inside like the wind that carries the embers of a dying fire out to the long yellow grass, immediately catching spark. Helplessly, she caves. “Yes.”

Blue’s mouth settles harshly. “Very well.” she snaps and turns away, back into the room.

Regina sighs and feels Emma nervously slide up beside her. She doesn’t say anything and Regina is grateful for it - for the way Emma understands the small things. The need for silence. Emma remains at her side, steady and warm.

After a while, she slowly returns. “We’ll put her in our basement,” She affirms, and though her horror is still there, she is momentarily soothed by the idea of a lock and a closed room.

Noticing the silence behind her, she turns to see Zelena staring despondently at the room their mother is in. There is a grief there that Regina understands entirely – she had learned from her own child that love is not weakness but she was a child once, too, and living with her mother had taught her enough about love to know that it is not always strength. It is not always good.

Reaching for her sister’s hand, she squeezes it gently. “You’re coming, too.”

*

In the basement, her mother sits on a small cot, prim and self-contained; her hands rest peacefully in her lap with a gray wool blanket covering her legs. A flashbulb hangs from the ceiling, offering a dark wan circle of amber light, touching all the walls of the small, cold room. And though it is larger than a prison cell – at least larger than her own– her mother still watches the dark stairways with eyes full of resentment. It makes the plate of warm food in Regina’s hands feel cold.

When she is all the way down the stairs, Cora raises her hands. “Is this really necessary?” The handcuffs fall against her sharp knobby wrists, the dark wiry veins looking pronounced beneath her paper-thin skin.

“I can’t have you here without them,” Regina doesn’t look at her mother’s hands, the thin, knobby bones and long fingers -- though far older than she remembers them to be -- she remembers watching them squeeze the most important things into nothing.

“Honestly dear, you don’t think you’re being a little ridiculous?” Her mother sighs as her hands drop back into her lap. “I can’t even _use_ my magic anymore and you have me handcuffed and locked in your _basement_.”

“You’re lucky to even be here, Mother.”

“Oh, sure. I'm lucky to be shivering in your cold wet basement." her mother snarks and idly picks at the wooly blanket on her lap, her handcuffs jingling quietly. “You couldn’t have bothered to bring your mother a heavier blanket?”

“I’ll look around for some more,” she sighs, but does not move. She's still holding the warm plate of food she had made for her, waiting anxiously in her hands. And though she would like to simply set it down on the desk beside her mother's bed and walk away, she remains standing. Waiting.

“Have you been able to use any?” Her mother asks eventually. “Magic, I mean. Have you been able to use it since waking up?”

“Only once so far."

"Really?"

"I saved Emma.” Regina answers though she had not intended to reveal anything on the matter her mother’s eyes are like a dangerous riptide when focused only on her. They always pull her in.

"That's wonderful, dear." Her mother smiles. It makes Regina’s heart beat fast. "You've always been very capable in magic."

"It feels different than before." she answers, despite herself. "It doesn't feel tied up in my anger anymore."

Her mother hums. "I suppose you think love is the answer in this, too." Her smile turns cold. "Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that. Love never seemed to work very well with us. We're the same, in that way.”

Regina shivers, feeling a cold horror slide down her back. She seeks out the familiar warmth of her magic, the way it had burned wildly inside from a simple careless touch - Emma knocking into her, blindly pulling something up from deep inside. 

Like feeling a loose thread, Regina feels Emma’s theory tickle in the back of her head. She stares down her mother. "What about Zelena?"

Her mother immediately stiffens, "What about her?"

"Can she not use her magic, either?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Regina purses her lips, hesitating. She doesn't want to reveal too much about Emma's theory, about the love that ties one another through life, holding strong even through death. The love that can twist you up inside, disorganize you, make impossible things happen, and the most natural things become impossible. Her mother waits edgily in the silence before scoffing, a hint of frustration in her voice, irritated by the distraction of her other daughter – a mistake of her youth. A careless and edgy reflection of herself. "I have no idea, dear. I don’t ask her these things. I don't really think Zelena is any of our concern."

"She's my sister." Regina barks, " _Your_ daughter. Don't you care about her at all?”

“Oh, so blood matters to you, now?” Cora sneers nastily. “I thought it made no difference to you, darling.”

Regina seethes silently, wanting words powerful enough to hurt her mother. But the moment slips away as something shifts above them. Her mother stops listening; she is staring up at the floorboards above them, dust and voices drifting down, falling around them. Regina wishes there were thicker walls and stone floorboards. Regina wishes she did not understand her mother so much. The quiet flicker near her mouth at the sound of Zelena’s voice, suppressed quickly, fighting against love the way that Regina had once fought to breathe through the water. With a heart in her chest, her mother is not untouched by love, but still she turns away from it.

Suddenly tired, she brings the plate forward. “I made you dinner, Mother.”   

“I can’t eat it.” her mother answers, barely glancing at it.

“It’s good. I cooked it myself,” Regina sighs, and even though she knows why it doesn’t keep the rejection from tickling the back of her neck, “I promise the meat is all fresh.”

“You know what I mean.” Cora snaps. “You must know, by now. You feel it too. You have to.” The coils of the mattress shift stiffly beneath her fidgeting; her voice lifts up into a nervous tone Regina’s never heard before. “I’m sure it tastes fine. I’m sure it tastes wonderful, dear, but it won’t taste like it should. Not anymore.”

“I know.” Regina gently sets the plate aside. “But I don’t know what else to do for you, Mother. We can’t just start killing pets to keep you satisfied.”

“It’s been harder to catch any, regardless.” Cora mutters, and suddenly her frail skin and thin, knobby hands make sense, her hunger pressing up from just beneath her skin. She probably hasn’t eaten properly in a week. Not now, with pet owners locking their dogs and cats inside their houses. Not if food turns to dust in her mouth.

“Why?” Regina asks with something sharp pressing against her chest, pressing deeper with her breath. “Why are you so angry all the time, Mother?”

“Because I’m here.” Cora answers immediately, as if only to answer a question she’s  asked herself. “Everything I’ve worked for – everything I’ve done to actually mean something has led me here.” Her hands twist sharply, jangling her handcuffs. “ _Dead and handcuffed_ in my daughter’s basement.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not.” Cora stares up at her with cool, dark eyes. “You don’t know what it’s really like. I gave you _so much_. So much that I never had. A bed, food in your belly every morning and night. You were _Queen_. _I gave you that_!” Her mother snarls, the volume of her voice lifting beyond her thin bones and fragile skin, all the changes in death that has softened her. “You have _no_ idea what it really feels like to fight for your life.”

“Yes I do.” Regina murmurs quietly and lifts a hand to her mother’s cold cheek, gently stroking the soft, pale skin with the back of her knuckles. “I had to fight it from you.”

Her mother’s face falls. Slowly, she slumps back into her bed, her frame returning to the shape of this fragile mother she has known only recently, the mother with a bitter corner to her mouth, who watches her from the side of her eyes, trying to catch something she hasn’t seen before. Her mother watches for as long as Regina’s hand is on her cheek, soothing back and forth, but when it falls her mother looks down again. She does not watch her leave.

Regina slowly walks up from the basement and onto the spiraled stairs. In the hallway, she sees Henry walking around in his room, picking up clothes and tossing them into a laundry bin with a book underneath his arm; Emma’s room is open, voices drifting out from the wide-open door. Emma. Zelena. Then Emma again.

Moving closer, she stops at the entrance of the room where Emma is wiping a ragged towel across the window glass with a disgruntled expression as Zelena watches from the chair in the corner.

“There.” Emma sighs and drops her hand, “ _Now_ it’s clean.”

“I don’t think so, there's still a smudge.”

“Okay, _bull shit_ , I’ve wiped this glass down three times now. It’s perfectly clear.”

“Go get your glasses, Savior. I see a smudge in the corner.”

“I have _contacts_ , I see just fine!” Emma huffs and wipes a curly blonde hair from her forehead. “Why don’t you jump up and do it yourself if it bothers you so much?”

“What? And clean up your mess?”

“It’s a smudge on a window!” Emma groans and Regina has to press her lips tight to stifle the sound of her quiet laughter. “You could be sleeping on the _couch_ , you know. I didn’t _have_ to give up my bedroom.”

“Oh, you mean your gracious offer to move into my sister’s master _bedroom_?” Emma blushes and though Regina means to watch longer, the laugh in her chest bubbles out into something warm and large, filling the entire room. As Emma hides beneath a hand, her face darkening even more, the happiness continues to climb inside of her, reaching the top and spreading out through all the difficult parts of her. After a while, Emma's shoulders jump with her own suppressed laughter, followed soon by Henry, down the hall, and then finally by Zelena; and though Regina knows they're amusement has more to do with her own laughter than the odd happy feeling inside of her, Regina leans against the door frame and laughs.

*

The sky outside is still a dark when she hears the guest room door creak open, the house still quiet all around her. Emma is beside her, snoring lightly, warming the back of her neck with her breath. Their hands are still loosely entwined, held gently through the night by the grip of Regina’s fingers.

Dazedly, Regina listens to the soft patter of her sisters feet across the hallway towards her room, watching the door open into the dark of the hallway. Her sister remains by the door, only a faint outline in the dark.

Frowning, she lifts up on her elbow to peer more closely. “What are you doing here?” she whispers.

“I thought we could take this time to talk.” The only sound in the dark is Zelena’s pajama pants scuffing quietly against the floor, a pair Regina recognizes vaguely, something she’s thoughtlessly washed and folded a hundred times before.

“And you couldn’t have waited for a more reasonable hour?” She makes a show of looking at the wrist watch beside her bed but she can only hear the faint ticking, its face too dark to read.

“Oh please, you don’t sleep anyway.’”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t _rest_.” Regina grumbles and settles back into the warm spot of the bed, Emma’s body warming the curve of her back. “And regardless if I sleep or not, my mood will still be affected if I don’t have a full eight hours of quiet.”

“Sounds like the Savior already ruined that for you.”

Regina sighs. “What do you want, Zelena.”

She can hear the faint creaking of the floorboards as Zelena moves closer, her voice as soft as the sound of her bare feet along wood. “What are we going to do about Mother?”

Closing her eyes, she slowly turns her head away from the direction of Zelena’s voice and the subject of her mother. But the darkness doesn’t become sleep and Zelena doesn’t leave. Breathing in deeply, she waits for the clamor of her heart to rest, like a stressed bird in a wire cage, it slowly settles back inside her ribs.

“I don’t know.” she says finally, still looking away. “She won’t eat anything I make.”

“Because she _can’t_.” Zelena entreats quietly, moving closer. “You know that. You must.”

“I do.” she whispers.

“So we won’t let her starve, right?” There is a faint tremor in Zelena’s voice, like a frightened child wandering into her bedroom to seek out assurances. Regina wants to reach out for her hand, but the distance between them feels impossible. Regina feels it the way she feels the two set of stairs spanning the space between her and her mother. And yet, still, she shivers. The coldness below seeps through the distance the way the rain would fill cotton or cloth.

She presses her body more firmly against Emma’s, the soft underside of her chin resting against her shoulder. “I don’t know if we have any other choice.” she whispers, “We’re not going to release her on unsuspecting citizens just so she can feel _comfortable_ , dear.”

“Not people.” Zelena appeals, but her voice wobbles, “Just animals.”

“People are already aware of the reason why their dogs are missing.” Her upper lip stiffens, because a heart is a heart, and it had sat there on the front of her door step instead of bones and skin. “And don’t believe for a second that our mother would ever hesitate before taking a person’s life. She might even prefer it.”

Zelena pulls in a wet breath, “So that’s it, then?” Her voice rises in volume, caught between anger and hurt. Feeling Emma stir against her, Regina shushes her warningly, but Zelena only scoffs, “Oh my god, _please_. She doesn’t hear anything.”

Regina hushes her again, but as she looks back, she can see through her hair and the shadows of the room that Emma’s eyes are still closed, her breathing still calm.

“You’re right.” She smiles, gently rubbing her fingers along the back of Emma’s hand. “Still. You might wake Henry.”

“The kid’s probably listening already.” Zelena huffs and crosses her arms, “Can we just decide on a plan?”

“I don’t have one.”

“So let’s _make one_.”

“I don’t think there _is_ one, Zelena _.”_

When she looks up again, she finds Zelena staring down at her, struggling with her words. Isn’t as noticeable as it would have been with Emma or Henry. Their nervousness is caught in their habits of motion, in the idle cracking their fingers or in the way they comb through their hair – she could track their progress effortlessly. With Zelena, there is only silence.

Regina waits, but Zelena’s mouth eventually presses into a small frown. She stares silently down at the floor like a scolded child.

Regina sighs and pulls the sheets away from her. “We’ll go to the local butcher.” she says, and gently tucks the sheets back around Emma’s body. “The meat is sold fresh every morning. If we go early, the meat will be almost freshly killed.”

“That will work?”

It’s so hopeful, so frantic. “It might.” Regina says, but she has suspicions. She’s starting to understand that meat makes very little difference, that it’s just the _killing_ that matters. Which is neither new nor surprising. After all, what had delighted her most about magic was not that she could control a heart with her voice and her hands, but that she could reach past the bones and skin of another person and take away the most living part of them and keep it for herself instead.

“I’m not sure.” she says instead, a far-off truth. She pulls on her coat. “They’ll be open in an hour. We’ll be the first ones there if we leave now.”

“Okay. Good.” The quiet relief in her voice seems to fill the space in the dark.

“Get a coat and shoes.”

She leaves a note for Emma before she leaves, hoping she sees it before her arms find the cold spot on her bed, before worry finds its resting spot in her chest. She’ll be gone for work by the time Regina comes back and so before she leaves she sighs a soft sweet kiss against Emma’s cheek; against the ticking wristwatch, she rests the words, _I’ll be home soon_

*

The store is still closed when they get there, the windows dark. Peering inside, Regina can only see a faint light in one of the distant rooms in the back where the offices sit. Early shift workers will still be rubbing the sleep from their eyes back there, ignoring all other noises but the _drip, drip, drip_ of coffee. Rapping lightly with her knuckles, she watches for movement on the other side.

“You have to knock louder than that.” Zelena’s teeth chatter as she shivers in her thin coat.

“I told you to bring a heavier coat.”

“And I told you to knock louder.” she grumbles and shifts forward, pounding repeatedly on the glass. “Open up, it’s freezing out here!”

“Oh my god,” Regina sighs and considers walking back in the car to simply wait, but lights begin to flicker inside and she can only imagine Zelena lasting a few minutes on her own before getting thrown out. Likely before the subject of a purchase can even be brought up; then she’d have left bed for nothing. By Zelena’s side, Regina waits for the locks on the door to slide away.

The door opens to a deeply irritated and familiar vaguely face. “We’re closed.” He grunts and is already in the motion of closing it again when Regina steps forward.

“Excuse me – are you Jaq?”

His face flickers with surprise. “Do I know you?”

“I’m a friend of Gus’s.”

“Oh.”

Regina smiles. The way his face softens is subtle and unremarkable but she is touched by it all the same – by the fierce, impossible love between siblings, something she is only beginning to understand. “How is he?” she asks.

“Good, he’s good.” Jaq doesn’t smile like Gus. It doesn’t pop up in every pause, but there is friendliness in his posture, in the gentle way he leans an arm against the door frame. “There have been a few people bothering him about the dead body they found. Came around his work and our house for a little while, so he’s lying low.” His voice is light, but somewhere deeper metal breaks up through his throat. “What can I get you?” He asks.

Regina wants to return to the conversation about Gus, to worry the details out of him, but she recognizes a redirection when she hears one. Smiling, she lets it goes. “We wanted the freshest cut of whatever is available.” She gently clears the discomfort from her throat. “As fresh as possible.”

Jaq stares at her for a moment, watching her shift uncomfortably. “Right.” he says, and opens the door wider. “Why don’t you come in and wait.”

Regina walks in first, the cool dark room surrounding her like a heart, smelling richly of blood and metal. Her mouth waters and she instinctively draws her arms tighter around her chest, closing herself to the urgent feeling inside.

“I’ll have to check what we have in store. But it’s all pretty recent.” Jaq blows warm air into his hands and rubs them together before closing the door behind them. “You were at the welcome back party, weren’t you?”

Regina goes still. Even with the majority of the town aware of her death, she still feels the admission like a stone weight on her tongue. “Yes.” she says at last.

“I thought so. I recognized you.” Jaq says, rubbing an uneasy hand against his neck. “So you’re like Gus, then, right? You’re – ”

“Dead, yes.”

Jaq nods and doesn’t move. There is something hesitant in the silence that follows, in the way he rubs the back of his neck as they stand, his mouth gently pressed into a frown of concentration. Finally, he breathes out a big breath and turns to her. “I don’t – I don’t really know anyone else whose returned other than Gus. We kind of keep to ourselves.”

Regina nods warily and waits.

“Would you –would you mind if I asked kind of a personal question?”

Regina manages to keep her smile. “I suppose.”

“I was just wondering if there are there like…lapses of time where you can’t eat at all.”

Her lungs tighten in her chest. She breathes sharply through her smile. “There is. It’s happened a few times.”

“So it…comes and goes...?”

“For some.”

He sighs. “Alright.”

“Is Gus…?” she can’t make herself finish. She doesn’t want to blend ideas that she’s trapped inside her mother with Gus’s warm boyish smile, the dimples in his cheek, his gentle, firm handshakes.

But Jaq shakes his head. “No, it’s not bad. It’s only happened once or twice. But a few nurses have come along with brochures and stuff.” He shrugs, his body caving to the weight of worry beating like a hammer in his heart. “They said it would only continue to happen. That...the hunger would grow until they would need to start eating people just to survive it.”

Regina feels stunted still. “Do you…do you believe that?”

Jaq shrugs, his eyes clear and gray. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t really change anything for me, if it were. Not with Gus. But things will start getting out of hand if it is. There has only been on incident and they’re already building a facility for you guys.”

Her heart jumps in her throat, caught. “ _What_?” she asks weakly.

“Started calling it the Helping Hand. Here, I still have the brochure.” He turns away to the counter, picking up a thin package, flipping through it absently. “It’s like a clinic or something. To control your urges and keep you in one place, like rehab but they don’t need your permission. All you need is a family member to sign you in.”

“Oh.”

“Here.” He tips the packet towards her to take, and though Regina wants nothing to do with it, her hands lift instinctively towards it. The pages are thick and glossy, the pictures all of large rooms with smiling participants. Jaq gently clears his throat. “You’re uh, good with your family, right?”

“Yes.” she assures immediately, glad at least for one thing she can know for certainty. “Emma would never. Henry wouldn’t either.”

“Didn’t think so.” Jaq say with a small smile. “Alright, I’ll go see what we have in the back. It’ll just be a minute.”

As he disappears into the back rooms, Regina folds the paper and tucks it away, not wanting to look at it anymore. But she can’t help but imagine the cold windowless rooms in the pictures, the long white walls and locked doors. In these rooms, she can imagine the nurses with their plastic hands, their patient, resentful smiles.

Her family would never turn her in, she knows, but there is something horribly inevitable about it. Like the long hallway she once walked down, her mother’s hand gripped around her arm as she walked her calmly to where the end of her childhood stood, smiling.

It’s all voluntary, she assures herself, but the folded paper feels like a rock in her pocket and Regina can’t stop imagining her mother beside her, clutching her arm, smiling as she walks her calmly, determinedly into the cold hush of locked rooms.

*

They leave a moment after Jaq returns, the car ride back to the house long and silent. Zelena has the package on her lap, the meat still warm, and Regina only stares at the road ahead of her, dread sitting like a stone in her throat.

When they pull up into the driveway, she feels the cold dread in her expand, stinging as tears in the back of her eyes; the garage door opens to only one car, Emma’s yellow bug already gone and parked somewhere else as the house in front of her seems to grow larger, the hate seeping up through the doors of the basement to fill all the rooms of her house the space between them.

Quickly, Regina starts the engine again. Already halfway out of the car, Zelena looks up at her with wide eyes, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to the station.” She says, the need to see Emma gripping her heart like a hand.

“Wait – you’re not doing this with me?” Zelena’s voice sweeps high and clear, “What do I do? I don’t even know how to cook.”

“She’ll want it raw.” she says, her hands tightening around the wheel, “Please Zelena. I can’t do this.”

There is a brief moment of silence before the folded skin between her sister’s eyebrows ease, softening. She sighs. “Okay.” she says and steps away, closing the door gently behind her.

Driving away, she glances briefly at the review mirror where Zelena waves weakly with the ends of her fingers, her face cloudy through the glass. Regina tries not to think about anything else but the road, steadily leading her far away from her house and her mother. Back to Emma.

She parks in the front of the building but doesn’t enter it. She doesn’t want to risk exposure to anyone else, to David or possibly Snow, their wary glares, their morals balancing evenly on the beliefs they assure are true only through themselves. Instead, she rounds the building to where she knows Emma’s office window is, the aluminum blinders shuttered close.

Leaning through the tall grass, she raps her knuckles on the window and waits only a moment before she sees the blinders shift, Emma peering out at her with her wide gray eyes. Just seeing her face relaxes something stiff in her spine, unfurling the stress there. She smiles and watches Emma’s fingers flutter away, the blinders falling back as she stands and moves out to meet her.

Emma walks out only a moment later, bundled in a heavy blue jacket.

“Hey,” she says, smiling warmly. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, dear. I just wanted to see you.” Regina quickly walks the short distance to be close again. “And maybe steal you away for a bit.”

“Okay," Emma smiles so happily that Regina has to close her arms around the love inside her ribs, as steady and warm as the light streaming in from wide open windows. Impossible to contain.

She presses close against Emma’s shoulder as they walk quietly side-by-side towards the most remote part of the town, the pier silent except for the sound of waves and seagulls. Distantly, a fog horn calls out across the white rolling sea.

When Emma sits at a bench, Regina immediately sits beside her.

“So what’s wrong?”

Regina huffs and peers out towards the sea, “Why does anything have to be wrong?”

“You're here to visit me.” Emma's fingers feel light and cool against her cheek as they gently brush back her dark hair, tucking it behind her ear. "That usually means you're going through something."

"Maybe I just wanted to visit you." Regina says, but the paper in her pocket still feels like a rock. Emma's fingers brush gently against her neck and up her cheek; she sighs, softening. “I don't think my mother will make it through this.”

Emma sighs. "I know. "

“I'm worried I’ll become like her.”

“ _You won't_.”

“I have before.” Regina looks out towards the ocean, the sea large and green, birds swooping low to steal fish from their homes. “I didn’t want to become her then, either. But it was easy, so easy to just follow in her footsteps. I hardly realized I was doing it.”

Emma is quiet for a while, staring out at the sea with her. “You came back from that, though.” she says finally, “You changed.”

“After _years_ of being cruel, Emma.”

“Do _you_ think it’s going to happen again?” When Regina looks up, Emma’s face is open and bare. Regina glances quickly over her expression, looking for fear.

“I’m not sure.” she says, and when Emma remains warm against her, a solid presence, she sighs and looks out towards the sea again. “Of course I do. Anger comes so easily to me.”

“Maybe it does. But you’re also the only person I know who has been able to come back from it.” When Regina purses her lips and Emma gently pushes closer, their shoulders jostling as she smiles. "Just listen to me for a second, alright? I know you think you’re somehow weaker because you gave in once, because you were dark, but I don’t see it that way. I think it makes you stronger. I think it shows just how capable you are to _change."_

Regina only hums dryly, but Emma leans forward, smiling warmly, beautifully, "You're always coming back, Regina. I think that's proof of something."

All the awe in Emma rushes out and touches her, reaching to all the cold distant corners of herself. It fills her with a love and fear so great she has to touch a trembling hand to Emma’s cheek just to calm it.

She wants to believe in what Emma says, but she fears it more. She fears the loneliness Emma will feel if she does fail, if she loses herself like her mother is beginning to. She fears for that warm hopeful heart, battering against her ribs, stuck in a dark enclosed place.

The thought of it makes her want to reach through the skin and space between them, to rescue Emma from her heart, from all the pain and love and hope it must endure. But she wouldn’t – she would never; instead, she presses her cold numb fingers against Emma’s chin and pulls her mouth to hers.

They kiss for a while, the cold air making them shiver, their teeth clattering between every press of their mouths.

Emma hums against her, breath tickling her lips as she asks, “Wanna go back to the office with me?”

Regina raises an eyebrow, and chuckles lowly when she feels Emma’s hand moving up her leg. “Isn’t David there?” she asks, and nearly gives in when Emma presses a few wandering kisses along her jaw.

“Yeah, but I have a door and a lock.”

Regina scoffs, “You’re too loud to do anything like that in public.”

Emma smiles into her, “So make me be quiet.”

She shivers, arousal warming inside of her. It’s not an easy thing to say no to. “I think I should go back.” she sighs finally, “To check on Zelena. I left her with a project she might not entirely be fit for.” But, gently, she brushes her fingers along Emma’s mouth and smiles, “But later.”

“Okay.” Emma smiles wider, cheeks now pink in the cold, “Later, then.”

Regina smiles and leans back for one more kiss. And then another. They stay there for a little while.

*

When Regina returns, the house is silent. There is late morning light tilting in through her kitchen, warming the back of her son as he eats cereal, smiling sleepily at her as she closes the door. She starts towards him instinctively, but she stops when she sees Zelena in the living room, tucked into a chair with bare feet, her hair covering most of her face as she idly flips through an old magazine.

It is so oddly comforting, watching her sister read in the living room, in the house she raised her son in. She approaches quietly, coming to stand behind her. “Were there any problems?” She asks gently and has to conquer the urge to comb her fingers through Zelena’s hair when she tilts her head up to look at her.

“No,” She says lightly. “She’s fine.”

Regina keeps herself from balking just in time. “Really?” She asks, and maintains her smile. “So she ate, then?”

“Yup.”

There is something in the tone of her voice that seems forced but her sister is in her living room with a blanket around her legs, reading a meaningless magazine and Regina lets it go. She wants the moment to last as long as it can, for the rooms of her house to be lived in, filled with the people she loves.

“Alright,” she says simply and combs her fingers gently through Zelena’s hair before she leaves for the kitchen. She does not check the basement.

Henry nods to her when she walks in, still finishing up his cereal. “Don’t you have school?” she asks, and glances at the oven, green numbers blinking back at her.

“Not yet. I don’t have a first period,” Henry says and shifts back, the late morning light falling around his shoulders, coloring the tips of his ears and hair. Sometimes she’s still surprised by just how much he has grown; his body no longer thin and knobby, carrying in him the five years lost between them.

A sharp pain pierces her heart. She wants to ask about college, about his new interests, about majors. She wants to live the years that were filled with her absence, the years that cloud in her head with questions too large and painful to put into words. She stands in the quiet of the kitchen, struggling with a painful smile.  

The silence falls heavily around them. Gently, Henry sets his bowl aside. “Have you had any breakfast?” He asks as he walks over to a cupboard. “I was thinking of making pancakes.”

Confusion gently crinkles her brow. “You’ve already had breakfast.”

“But you haven’t.”

Oh. She smiles. “That’s alright, dear. You’re probably busy with getting ready for school.” It is a point she argues only half-heartedly.

“Nah, I got time,” Henry glances back at her over his shoulder. “We can make apple pancakes like we used to.”

She breathes. “Okay,” she says, and smiles.

As she watches him stretch out towards the taller cupboards, she thinks of the Saturday mornings they spent together; when Henry was still just a little toddler wanting to watch her cook, resting sleepy and heavy her hip as she moved around the kitchen, helping measure out cups of flour and milk.

It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that it’s been years since those Saturday mornings. Years since she has been able to lift her son up in her arms. But still, when Henry returns to the counter, she steps in close, sets her hip against his as they follow the old familiar routine of making breakfast.

*

Henry leaves after breakfast, and though she is still vaguely hungry she carries the plate out into the living room, and then further when she spots the empty seat on the couch. After a few more rooms, she walks hesitantly to the basement door and down the stone steps, preparing for the quiet hush of the room once the door swings shut behind her.

What she is not prepared for, however, is the empty bed. The handcuffs are resting atop the neatly folded towel, the silence nearly deafening.

“Zelena,” she calls breathlessly, panic beating a pulse behind her ears. “Zelena, where is she?”

The door creaks quietly, and when she turns around Zelena is there, slumped against the doorframe with her arms wrapped tightly around her. Her face is hidden mostly by shadows, but she can see the sunken shape of her shoulders, collapsed onto herself with nothing but the door and her arms to keep together.

Shakily, she asks. “What have you done?”

“She was hungry.”

The air around her is freezing, stinging in her lungs like ice water. “You said she was fine.” Regina steals another sharp breath, voice rushed. “You said she ate.”

Zelena shrugs. “I lied,” She tilts her head away, the light touching the side of her jaw, the cold twist of her mouth. “What else could we do? She was starving down here. I had to do something.”

“So you set her on the whole town?” Regina snaps, climbing up the stairs in a sudden burst of motion, pushing past her sister. “What do we do now, then, Zelena? Just let her kill someone? She could be anywhere – if we don’t stop her, she could kill anyone.” She loses her voice in the sudden well of breathlessness, a ball of panic tightening in her stomach.

 _Emma_. She draws in a shaky breath, struggling to remain calm as something stirs inside of her – like it had that day, in the stables when she watched her mother’s hands curl into a fist and turn a heart into dust – and as panic beats hard against her ribs, the thought drums loudly in her ears: _not again, not Emma, not Emma_.

Starting forward, she moves blindly toward the door, the hard rushing in her urging her on. She imagines Emma on the ground, heavy and cold, her body opened up like a suitcase to the parts of her hidden by skin and bone, turned out by her mother’s cold hands. Zelena clatters down the stone steps behind her, struggling to keep up.

“Regina wait, she said she wouldn’t kill anyone – just an animal!” Zelena argues behind her, breathlessly trying to catch up to her somehow, “She’s not going to hurt anyone,” she calls and Regina doesn’t listen. Fear is climbing high inside her, recognizing the danger in every second that passes. Every moment where her mother is somewhere she is not, somewhere where Emma might be. (She had been devastated by Daniel’s death. She would not survive Emma’s.)

At the end of her driveway, she comes to a heavy stop, having no idea where to go – where her mother might have gone. It’s an accidental glance to the ground that she finds the footsteps in the damp, white ground, veering off to the edge of the forest in large strides, as fast as a run. Her heart jumping in her throat, she follows them.

As they trek through the forest, she can’t help but start hoping for a body – for some unknown victim to claim the horror of her mother’s hunger, anyone but Emma or Henry. Anything that might keep the ones she loves from her mother.

It’s no more than a few minutes before she finds her mother again.

She hears the sounds first – the wet scrape of teeth and flesh, the sound of tearing – but she doesn’t let it slow her down. She needs to see the body. Splayed out against the ground, it’s nearly unrecognizable in its gore, twisted in impossible angles, but as she glances quickly over the ravaged skin and untraceable details of their face, she finds short black hair.

“Gods.” Zelena breathes against her, but Regina doesn’t say anything. To pump blood back through her heart, she stares at his dark hair and the unwavering fact that his death was not Emma’s. That Emma is still out there, alive, unknowingly spared.

“Regina,” Zelena shuffles close and the sheer sound of her fear returns Regina to the moment, the sickening sounds around them. “Regina, what do we do?”

Regina doesn’t answer. The blood is nearly black in the places where his body had caved. There is only a stump for his arm, shiny red muscle clinging stubbornly to bone, and Regina has to close her eyes beneath the sudden immensity of her hunger.

When she feels Zelena start to move closer, Regina snatches her arm and pulls her back. “Behind me,” she snaps, and doesn’t let go. She holds Zelena’s hand as she steps closer, the glinting white snow slowly turning pink and then red as she moves towards her mother.

“Mother?” Regina quietly asks, but Cora makes a noise in the back of her throat, inaudible but awful, somehow. Inhuman. It rumbles lowly in her throat as she eats and Zelena whimpers quietly against her. Regina squeezes her hand once and steps a little closer. “Mother, can you hear me?”

Cora pauses, frighteningly still in the horror around her, still kneeling beside the broken body. Gently, very gently, as if she were touching a child she doesn’t want to wake, Regina lays a hand on her shoulder. Her mother stiffens, her lip slowly curling upward and Regina has to fight the urge to turn away and flee.

“Mother,” she whispers, and nearly startles when her mother looks up at her, half her face soaked in blood, staining her white teeth. But the most frightening part isn’t the gore, or the dead body (it’s not Emma), but her gray, cloudy eyes – as blank and unblinking as an animals. “Oh Momma,” Regina breathes heavily, the name tripping out of her mouth as helplessly as it had as a child, caught in all the grief and love in her heart.

Her mother’s face contracts. An odd noise hums in the back of her throat, a mix between a snarl and something else, a gentle struggle to come out as words.

She is not sure what she would have done if not for the distant sound of car doors slamming closed, of incoming footsteps. She might have continued stroking her mother’s shoulder until her mother snapped again. She might have left her there in the middle of the forest – as Zelena had been left.

But the sound of people strikes her fear, the need to save her mother bulging like a knot inside her throat. She shakes her mother’s shoulder a little more roughly, “Mother, you have to come back now.”

Cora’s face flickers, and Regina nearly stands in shock when her mother’s eyes begin to clear, opening like the basement door to the darkness behind it, all the rage and hatred, a cold malevolence. It lasts for a moment before she realizes where she is. What she had done.

The wind carries the sound of voices to them, fluttering lightly with the dead leaves. Regina does not expect the fear in her mother’s eyes; watching it cloud her face strikes her heart like a stone, her mind reeling with a range of ideas, ways to get them all out of this.

The men are too close to avoid, she knows. Their voices are already creeping up from the top of the hill. And even if they do hide, her mother is covered in blood and is in no position to run or hide for too long.

She could leave her mother. She could escape what is about to happen.

But her mother grips her arm. “Don’t you dare leave me,” she snarls, her voice harsh even as she pleads. Helplessly, Regina is drawn down to her again, still wanting everything that was refused to her. Slowly, after a deep breath, she pulls her mother up to her feet.

Though she knows they won’t make it, she helps her mother move towards the trees. The voices behind them rise suddenly as they discover the body, filled with anger and fear. The shouts shorten into quick exclamation, coming closer, following their footsteps.

They don’t go very far. She knew they wouldn’t. Behind them is the heavy sound of rubber boots in the icy dirt and snow, following their clear, bloody path. They’re coming in fast - like hard determined horses - and though it is hopeless, Regina still closes her eyes and imagines that they are far enough through the trees not to be seen. That somehow, they won’t see her.

But she hears the familiar click of a gun, and the ringing silence after it. “Don’t move,” a man rumbles, and she feels her mother grip tighten on her arm, pressing hard with her bony fingers.

“Turn around,” he says.

There is the rumble of nervousness at the sight of Cora when they turn around. Anger presses down their mouths, their rifles aimed to kill.

“That’s it,” one of them says. “I’m sick of this shit. Dead people walking around, taking lives. I’m sick of it. I’m not letting it happen again.”

“She lost control – it was a mistake,” Zelena grits out through clenched teeth. “It won’t happen again.”

“Right.” The man starts forward, rifle still lifted. “The last guy was a mistake, too, I guess.”

“That wasn’t her!” Her sister snaps, warily watching the rifles as they point above her head to Cora, covered in blood. “If you want confirmation, you can ask that Blue Fairy bitch.”

“What about her, then?” Someone says, and though Regina doesn’t look at them, she knows they’re looking at her. “The Queen might have done it. Your whole lot is a ticking time bomb, but her especially.”

“No,” Zelena shakes her head, looking back at her. “Regina didn’t do anything. She just came here to help -”

“Right,” one of them says, taking a step forward. “Just came to help hide her mother’s little accident. Maybe join in on the fun too.”

“No, she just – Look, it was my fault alright? She had no part in this!”

The men don’t even look at her. “Maybe it’s best if you leave. Let us take care of this now.”

“You’re not just going to shoot them,” Zelena laughs, wildly, incredulously, but the hard faces looking back at her drains her face of blood. “You can’t, you – wouldn’t. This is just one time – it won’t happen again. Regina hasn’t even done anything! She’s the more innocent one of all of us!”

Regina wants to hush her, but she can’t reach her voice through the tightness in her throat. She can only look above the heads of the men and through the trees to the red brick roofs still visible in the distance. Her own is not too far away. She imagines her house now, the square, central hallway, the spiral stairwell, the slanted steps and her room, the warm bed. Emma’s long blonde hair and her son’s wide smile.

The thought of her absence fills her like a slow flood – it rushes through her as it had once filled her house, running along the hallways, creeping up the stairwell and through the cracks of closed doors, filling the rooms and all the long lonely years.

“Not innocent enough,” the man grunts and steps over a tree root, his rifle pointing at Regina’s chest. “Come on, we’re going for a walk.”

Zelena steps back, breathless as another man moves around her, pointing a rifle to Cora’s chest. “You too,” he says and doesn’t even blink when her mother sneers at him.

“Fine then,” Zelena rasps, following closely behind. “But I’m coming too.”

But the men pay her no mind, moving carefully over the rocky terrain, they keep their eyes on Regina and her mother, the tip of their guns poking into their back. Her mother is still clutching her arm as they walk, and though it isn’t a hallway, she still feels as though she is being led calmly to the end.

Stepping unevenly from the dirt to a loose cement road, Regina understands suddenly where they are taking her. You want to go where there’s no magic? Emma had asked her once, gripping the car wheel tightly. She could predict the way it would end, like smoothing out a wrinkled shirt – every last pocket of air leaving all at once.   

“Why not just shoot us?” She asks as they walk toward the edge of town.

“You’d leave a body behind,” one of them says.

She clamps her mouth shut and refuses to speak again. She will not beg for her life.

As the town line creeps up, she feels a cold hand slide into her own and Regina just squeezes, recognizing her sister’s bony knuckles and long fingers.

The air is damp with coming rain, the trees whipping back and forth with a cold wind and Regina watches as the town line approaches with a steady gaze, her mind calling back old, comforting memories. Emma on her back laughing, soaked and sandy. Henry’s arms trembling as they wrapped around her in a hug, trembling with his laughter, his tears wet on her neck.

At the edge, she breathes in a sharp watery breath, her chest tight with the thought of her family breaking down like the planks and sea-softened boards of an old ship wreck. God, she just wants to be home.

“Alright, one of you first.” A gun pushes on her back and she stumbles forward, the town line nearly touching her toes.

She breathes in a sharp breath, fear skittering up her back as she presses back, as far as she can from the dangerous death humming just a few inches in front of her – but there is still the gun poking a bruise between her shoulder blades, keeping her there.

She’s not ready – god, she’s not ready – there’s still so much she wants, so many years she has not lived.

Her mother’s hand slides down into Regina’s open palm, feeling dry and chalky with dried blood, and though Regina’s instinct is to recoil – to separate herself completely from the violence of her mother – she is too scared. She doesn’t have the strength to let go of anything yet.

When she looks at her mother, she finds something calm and determined in her features. Her mother doesn’t say a single word as she steps on to the other side, Regina’s hand in hers.  

“No!” She breathlessly gasps, horror rushing through her as her mother stiffens and immediately falls to her knees. Her mother’s grip tightens, the last part of her still alive holding with all she can to the bones and flesh of her youngest daughter, pulling her quickly toward the silence on the other side.

She would have been pulled the whole way if Zelena’s arms hadn’t jumped out across her body, yanking her away and falling heavily to the ground with her, the cement bruising their ribs. Zelena’s arms remain wrapped tight around her. They both stare with silent horror at their mother’s silent body, curled towards them on the other.

The town line is so close she can feel the silent hum of its magic against the tips of her fingers, still connected to her mother’s deathly cold hand. Zelena is shuddering all around her, magic humming inside of her too – released suddenly of her mother and the terrible love that knotted them together, through death and life.

Her mother is dead and she is alive and for a moment Regina is filled with only relief.

But then she feels the steel push of the gun against her side again. “You too,” a man grunts.

The metal pushes hard into the soft space between her ribs and Regina breathes in sharply, sliding an inch too close, feeling the stale, deadly air brush against her chin like a kiss.

“No, not her,” Zelena snarls and roughly pushes the gun aside. The man behind the gun scoffs and grabs a fistful of her shirt to push her away, to press the sole of his foot against Regina’s back and push. He moves her no more a centimeter before Zelena’s magic bursts from inside of her, flowing out of her like a raw, jagged scream.

The man arches high into the air and then comes spiraling down, his head hitting the cement in a loud, sickening crack. And then there is silence. He does not move again.

The other, still standing, glances wildly between his friend and Zelena, “What did you do!” He yells, voice cracking in sudden grief, and lifts up his rifle.

Zelena paralyzes him with a flick of her hand and stands.

“Zelena,” Regina manages weakly, slowly lifting onto an arm. But she still holding her mother’s hand, and to stand is to let go, so she remains where she is. “Stop. Zelena, stop.”

“Why.” She says flatly, monotone.

“Because.” Regina draws in a deep breath, feeling it ache in her lungs. It’s a question she’s asked herself countless times in her life. It’s a question that she’s never been able to completely answer. “It won’t help with anything,” she says, which is true enough. But with her mother’s hand still cold against her palm, she knows it only answers so much.

Zelena glances back at her, her hair blowing dark across her face – so much darker in the cold light, so much like her mother, so much like her own. She stares at her for a while, her hand still extended out to keep the man’s body still, his organs functioning within like a fluttered frantic bird.

“You could kill him,” Zelena says, and Regina feels it hit her like a fist.

“No.”

“You’re angry, aren’t you?” She asks, and Regina has to close her eyes because it’s there, that immense anger – it wraps around her chest like a strong embrace, pushing together until her ribs feels like an iron cage around her heart. She can feel the anger in her jaw, in the warm red behind her eyelids, in the sharp pangs of hunger in her stomach. “You want to, I know you do. I know anger like yours. Mother did too. Make him feel it.”

“Don’t bait me,” Regina snaps, but she glares at the man across from her, his expression one of fear and hate. And it is so tempting to give into. It is a warm promise, telling stories of a future where she can be cruel and still win, she can have everything. And it is so tempting to give into.

But she can still feel the cold dead grip of her mother’s hand, the skin still chalky with dried blood as her mother lies curled on the other side, dead and alone. She does not crumble or turn to ash. Her skin still looks freshly touched by life, only now beginning to fade, but her body is diminished, reserved now to only her small frame and bare feet, her small curled fingers and the certainty of death in her face.

Regina stares at her, knowing just how little separates her from her mother. How close their fates are entwined. How easily her mother’s death could have been hers – how much it could still be.

“We have to call Emma,” she says, and Zelena’s shoulders slump.

Her sister doesn’t look at the body curled on the floor, not when she finally fishes a phone out of the man’s pocket and not in any of the steps she takes towards Regina. She is still staring at the ground when she passes over the phone – and Regina only has two hands, both busy, but there is something in Zelena that strikes as more important. And so, to hold her sister, she lets go of her mother.  

Zelena curls around her like a child, her head in her lap. The man is still frozen, staring at them with an anger and fear she knows intimately, so she does not release him as she puts the phone to her ear and calls Emma.

Rain slowly falls around them, a light tapping on the cement. She hears the rain on Emma’s side too, through the buzz of static and the distance between them, stretching through the long roads and the dead that seem to surround them all.

“Emma.”

“Regina, is that you?” Emma’s voice lifts up with amusement. “What phone are you using? I don’t recognize the number.”

Her heart catches at the sweet sound of Emma’s voice – but the moment Emma is in is stretched too far away from her, only connected through a fuzzy phone call and the cold rain.

“Emma,” she doesn’t bother to hide the quiver in voice. For a moment, the only audible sound is the rain on either side, in opposite parts of town. “Emma, I need you to come and pick us up, please.”

“Okay,” Emma voice is filled with immediacy. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“The town line,” she says, answering all at once.

*

Emma’s pulls up in the cruiser only minutes later, blue lights flashing. Stepping out, she grabs the guy by the jacket before Zelena can even release his paralysis and throws him in the back of her cruiser, his body stiff as a board, hitting knees and arms against the metal frame before she shoves him through and closes the door.

She looks back to the other man, still lying on the cement, but Regina shakes her head and Emma doesn’t speak, her teeth clenching hard against each other. She just nods and opens up the driver door to drive them home.

Regina sits in the passenger seat with Zelena balancing precariously on her lap as the man in the back glares with dark eyes through the metal gate dividing them. No one speaks, Emma’s mouth still holding back all the tension in her jaw as she drives through the streets with a white-grip. At the Sheriff station, David is already waiting at the curb with handcuffs.

Getting the man out of the car is too difficult frozen stiff, but when he was released, the snarling words that falls out of his mouth fills the car through the entire drive home.

It was not the words that mattered – promising death and future hurt – Regina hardly blinks at that at all. But the vehemence in them seems to sit with them the whole way back, determining a part of her future Regina hadn’t wanted to know about, yet. It draws to a close a conclusion she both feared and expected: that it won’t get any easier.

Henry is there when they open the door, ducking immediately into her arms. His arms press along her back as he grips her shoulders tightly, and she presses her cheek against his and closes her eyes. Zelena stays by her side, still holding her hand, unwilling or just unthinking to remove it.

“It’s alright, dear. I’m here,” she assures and presses a soft kiss on his cheek and then another. “I’m alright.”

Henry nods but he does not let go.

It is only when they have separated minutes later, all settling quietly into the living room, that Regina notices that Emma is gone. Frowning, she looks to Henry, sitting obligingly beside Zelena, who looks back and frowns with understanding, nodding to the kitchen.

As she walks through the doorway, she remembers the conversation she had with Emma in the Sheriff station so long ago – how much they had leaned on each other, mother and son, learning to live through her absence.

It is a small comfort to know that they will have each other, regardless of what happens to her.

But whatever small comfort she gathered falls away at the sight of Emma in the kitchen, in the corner, her back facing her. Her arms are cradling her ribs, and Regina can hear the noises she is trying hard not to make. The peeping sounds, the odd catch of breath.

“Emma,” she sighs and gently closes the door behind her.

Emma breathes out and gently presses the heels of her palms to her eyelids. “Sorry…” she mumbles, voice thick with tears. “I’ll come out soon, I promise.”

“It’s okay,” she soothes. “Take your time.” But as she steps forward, Emma shifts away. And while the rejection does not sting quite as much as it had that first night, she still comes to a stop. Her heart aching, she leans against the counter, pressing the tips of her fingers against the cool hard marble, making the decision to wait instead.

It does not take long. Emma’s breath slowly evens out, hitching only occasionally as she dries her wet cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she says at last and tilts her head up to stare at the ceiling. “You’re the one who almost died today. I should be trying to comfort you.” Her voice wobbles weakly and Regina wants to close the space between them so much, but she presses her fingers harder against the counter and stays where she is.

A part of her thinks, for a moment, about preparing her for what might happen. For a future that might go on without her. But the thought of it constricts painfully in her chest. “Please don’t worry about that,” she finds herself saying instead. “It didn’t happen – I’m still here, Emma. Just focus on that.”

“But it almost happened.”

“I know. But I’m here now,” she says again, as though it could push the possibility of her death farther away. It doesn’t, she knows.

Emma breathes in deeply and looks at her with tired, red eyes. “It’s not going to get any easier, is it?”

“No,” she agrees and watches the pain across Emma’s face. The hope is still there, beating in her heart, but it is aching now, battering inevitably against the reality of the bones keeping it in.

“I almost lost you again,” Emma says and shivers, crossing her arms around her chest as she shuffles closer. “I didn’t expect to. I didn’t last time either. I saw you just a few hours ago and didn’t suspect a thing, not as you were being walked with a gun against your back. Not as they pushed your Mom over and almost did the same to you – I didn’t suspect a single thing. I was still thinking I’d come home and we’d have dinner and go to bed and make love.” She rasped hoarsely and steps closer.

“Oh Emma,” she breathes. “This wasn’t – how could you possibly know?”

Emma trembles and drops her head to Regina’s shoulder. “I can’t lose you again,” she whispers, shaking gently, shuffling forward a few inches just to lean against her. “I couldn’t survive it, if I did.”

Regina closes her eyes and curls her fingers through Emma’s hair. “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”

Emma just trembles and Regina holds her closer, gently combing through her hair, and though she knows exactly what to say – the common, soothing assurances – she stares out at the wall behind her, at her face reflecting back in the sleek black refrigerator.

And though it is still hers, she can’t stop imagining her mother’s face instead. Those dim cloudy eyes and a mouth covered in blood.

*

It is her mother’s violence that ultimately sets everything in motion. The Helping Hand opens its doors, a recommendation that is posted as fliers on every door with returned loved one at home. And then it becomes required. It comes as a signed law by Belle, written clearly from the words in Mother Superior’s mouth.

Some turn themselves in willingly, others by frightened family members. Most, she knows, are forcibly removed. Ripped from their families and dragged down their stairs, forced into the back of a car; into the cold hush of locked rooms.

A part of her is impressed by the point-blank attack on the town, Blue’s influence leaking out from the Mayor’s office, uncurbed by Belle’s hesitancy, making rights for the dead a simple and unexplored gray area. She’d have called a town meeting, at least – but well, she’s not Mayor, and likely never will be again if her house is the next one on the list to visit with a van.

Henry is on the couch next to her, sitting stiffly as they both listen to Emma on the phone in the other room, pacing back and forth again and again. Regina’s heard her enough on the phone to recognize there is a script in every person on the council Emma fights with. It always ends the same – the quiet, calming excuses; that it’s all just temporary, a holding place to figure out what next, a safe place.

But the underlying point is: no there is nothing you can do. And so every day, Regina watches for a car to pull up.

When the phone finally ends, Emma falls heavily into the seat next to her. “We can hide you.”

It almost puts a smile on her face. “Emma,” she sighs lightly, “What would that do?”

“It could give you time.”

“Not much. There isn’t enough places in town where Blue wouldn’t look,” she says, and watches Emma’s brow furrow into a familiar crinkle, the stubborn line that’s pushed every one of their arguments into something terrible, ending in either loud voices or tears. She moves on quickly, “Where would I go?”

“Snow’s?”

“Snow,” Regina sighs. “That would be the first place they’d look. Isn’t Graham still there?”

“No, he was one of the first to turn himself in.” The side of Emma’s mouth pulls up uninvited with an amusement she struggles to ignore, the moment too hard, too difficult for a smile, but Emma’s humor often cradles the difficult love she has for her mother so the smile remains. “Better prison than another morning with Snow, I guess.”

She might have agreed on that, but to say it out loud would take away Emma’s smile, so instead she says, “What makes you think she will hide me?”

Emma shrugs.  “She loves you.”

“She doesn’t even believe I’m here.”

“I think she does. She must at least a little, by now.” Emma leans her head back against the couch. She doesn’t close her eyes, but they droop heavily, tired from the day. “She rallied the searches for you, you know. We all hoped you’d be found somewhere, injured, but alive, waiting for assistance – we all thought that for a while. But I don’t think she ever really considered…” Emma sighs heavily, and closes her eyes.  “I just don’t think she knows how to accept anything else.”

Regina doesn’t say anything else. She thinks of Henry in the car, gripping the car wheel hard as they stared out into the cold morning, graves poking out of the ground. He had needed an empty casket to make the dead woman in his head fade away. Emma had needed a hug. She wonders what it would take Snow.

“So how about it?” She glances over to see Emma looking at her again, sleepy but focused. “You wanna stay at Snow’s for a little while?”

Regina blinks. She hadn’t thought of it as a choice but rather simply the next course of action, decided already. But as she sits there, she feels both Emma and Henry warm against her, turning to look at her, waiting for her decision. Even Zelena, pretending not to notice the conversation as she muddles aimlessly around the kitchen, pauses to look at her.

She has a sudden moment of clarity. She is the engine in this family, moving all three of them forward, through their lives, deciding when and where to turn. If she dies, if she disappears…

She doesn’t want to think about it.  “Yes,” she says, just to make a decision, to change something. “We’ll go to Snow’s.”

*

It is still dark when Emma parks at the side of Snow’s apartment. “We can’t hang around for long, or people will notice our car.” Emma leans closer to Regina to look out of the passenger seat window, “But I think it’s early enough to still go up there with you. I don’t think anyone’s watching you.”

Regina doubts it, but Emma’s face is already edgy with anxiousness so she nods and steps out.

Doors slam closed behind her. Emma and Henry are warm at her side as they walk up to building and up the three flights of stairs, all the way to Snow’s door. As Emma knocks, Regina looks out the small window to the other buildings to where the lives of people are displayed in clothe lines and potted plants, shirts hanging dry and tea cups absently on porch chairs.

She breathes through the sadness crammed close in her chest, her fingers curling into the silky fabric of her pocket at the thought of her house empty of her again. To keep from crying, she stares at the hard lines in Emma’s back and waits.

When the door cracks open, Regina can only see the tip of Snow’s nose and her forehead before it closes again, sliding away a metal lock and opening to Snow’s hard face and the quiet rooms behind her.

Regina wants to turn back and leave for her own house, but instead she smiles and follows Emma and Henry inside.

“I’m not sure how you expect this to work, Emma,” Snow whispers, gently disapproving as she closes the door behind them.

“I’m just trying to take it step-by-step at this point Mom.”

“She can’t stay here forever.”

“I know,” Emma heads into the living room with a heavy sigh, letting the overnight bag Regina had packed onto the flat cushion of a chair. “But she’ll be safe here for at least a little while. I’ll figure out the rest later.”

Snow’s lips press hard together, but she nods. She glances only briefly at Regina before quickly looking away again, clearing her throat. “You two should be heading out soon,” she nods to the door and the long, dark hallway behind it. “People will notice your car.”

“Right,” Emma says, but she stands silently, hesitating to start the next moment. Regina is aware of the seconds that pass, stuck somewhere on a moment before the goodbye – the kisses and hugs, transitioning from being together to being apart.  

Henry is the one to step forward first, pressing a gentle kiss against her cheek. “Bye, Mom.”

“Bye, sweetie,” she sighs and gently squeezes his arm. “You be good to Emma. And please look after Zelena.”

He smiles, “I will.”

When she turns around Emma is at her side, struggling to hide a tremor in the corner of her mouth as she presses a quick kiss against her cheek. “I’ll call later,” she whispers and pulls away again, too brief.

“Alright,” Regina already misses the faint tickle of Emma’s hair against her cheek and the touch of her lips. She wants to go home with her and sleep in their bed and have a real kiss, one that does not feel like a goodbye, but instead she steps away and does not watch them leave.

Snow stands stiffly in the silence that follows. “Thank you for letting me stay here,” she says and walks to the small black overnight bag on the chair just to touch its familiar weight. Something brought back from home.

“Right, sure,” Snow quickly clears her throat and looks away, the silence falling heavily around them.

Regina gently lifts the strap over her shoulder and presses the bag close to her side. “Are you working today?”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” she says, and tries not to feel distressed with the thought of long, empty hours in a silent house. “Where is Neal?”

“Still asleep. Though, if he hears your voice...” she trails off, and Regina recognizes the familiar scorn in her voice, remembering the quiet, exhausting pain in the muscle across her breastbone as she watched her son daily begin to favor someone else. Snow notices and looks away, “You can stay in Emma’s old room.”

Gently, she nods and distances herself again.

The stairs creak softly beneath her heels and she holds the thin metal railing to lean her weight elsewhere, recognizing Emma’s room as the empty one she had woke up in with a rough bruise on the back of her head. Now, she coasts the perimeter of the hardware floors for something familiar, the white windows and nicked desks all holding memories she is not familiar with.

When she finds a photo album on the bottom rink of a drawer, she sighs in relief and settles onto the corner of the bed. Her fingers smooth over the wooden cover, the spine creaking gently when it opens. The glossy pages are heavy with pictures.

The first one she finds is old but it puts a smile on her face. Mary Margaret is smiling obliviously beside a clearly uncomfortable Emma Swan, still rough and unknown, a stranger to them both. But she is smiling hesitantly with the corners of her mouth and Regina traces the lines with a tender finger.

A few pages in, she finds herself in a few photos. Smiling with Henry. Distracted at Granny’s, sipping coffee. A family dinner she only vaguely remembers now, still new and tentative, but the picture captures what she is sure would have been a tradition had she lived longer. One or two are of her standing tentatively beside Emma with a closed-mouth smile, waiting for the click.

Turning the next page, she catches her breath, the grief as immediate as a car crash, as quick and unseeing. Her fingers hesitate at the corner as she stares at a picture of Henry, standing solidly beside Snow, his smile forced and eyes flat.

It looks like a family get together, Snow’s arm wrapped around his waist, but he stands as rough and uncertain as Emma had in the first picture, like a stranger. Just passing through.

Her fingers tremble as they edge along the corner of the page, turning slowly.

Her absence is as clear and immediate in the picture as the flare of birthday candles, Henry looking up with an expression of someone who doesn’t want their picture taking, but yields to it graciously. She glances quickly across the whole page, her family’s life spilling out in odd pockets, uneven and uneasy.

One catches her eye more than most. It is a group photo of the family at the beach. Henry stands obligingly beside Snow in the front. But in the back row, something is happening. David’s profile is turned toward Emma, his face caught forever in concern, filled with a question he never finished asking.

The wind has blown Emma’s hair partially across her face, but even with it as a curtain, it is clear she is not smiling. She stands there behind Henry and Snow, staring at the camera with a dull, unresponsive state. She looks completely unconnected from the act of picture-taking.   

Regina breathes in shakily and touches Emma’s face, the grief in her face as plain as the empty place beside her where should have been standing.

“I never knew how to handle her grief,” Snow says quietly at her place by the door and Regina does not stop tracing the hard lines in Emma’s face, the corner of her mouth touched by grief. “It never seemed to get any smaller. I thought it would, gradually. Over time. But she seemed just as unreachable to me as she had those first few days we found you, five years later.”

Regina just nods and turns another page. Emma is less frequent in them, but even when she’s present, she isn’t there. In one picture she stands off to the side of Snow’s shoulder and though she is standing completely still, her face looks unreadable as though dimmed by sudden motion, her smile like a passing blur on her face.

Gently, she traces the places where grief touches Emma face. “What did it feel like when your heart split in two?” She finds herself asking and looks up to Snow.

Snow stares down at her with confused eyes. “Why?”

“I always wondered,” she says, and it was true.

“Terrible,” Snow says eventually, staring down at the photo album. “But not for the reason you might think. Splitting my heart hurt, but it was necessary, I didn’t think twice about it once I realized it might bring him back to life. It was the moment before that that was insufferable – with David on the floor, his heart gone. I never knew more about death than I did in that moment. I never want to know it again.”

Emma’s face looks up at her from the album, her eyes dark and distant. “You brought your husband back from the dead,” she says, and in a moment understands. Love powerful enough to bring people back doesn’t live in Snow White’s heart alone. When she looks up, Snow is staring at her, connected at once in a rare moment of understanding. Regina smiles, “You’re more familiar with your daughter’s grief than you think, my dear.”

Snow stares at her for a while. She opens her mouth and then closes it. Her face is moving steadily towards a slow understanding, like the feeling before rain begins to fall, before anything can form, there is the prickle of awareness.  It dawns and breaks into Snow’s face.

The front door opens before any of them can speak, the sound of David’s voice drifting up through the walls, pulling Snow’s attention instinctively to his movement. When she glances back, it’s with an expression of a rushed uncertainty.

“I have to go to work.”

“You should probably go then.”

“I can probably still call in a substitute.” Snow twists her fingers together, “I – if you want, we can keep talking.”

“I’m not sure if that would be wise,” Regina replies as gently as she can, to the soft vulnerability in Snow White. “It would seem suspicious if you didn’t show up today.”

“Right,” she sighs, and Regina understands, because it’s been five years and months since then and the thought of wasted time must feel suffocating.

“It’s fine,” she says, and closes the photo album. It rests as a pleasant weight against her legs. “I’ll still be here when you come back.”

Snow nods, smiling faintly, relieved. The stairs creak gently and David’s voice rumbles deeply from the hallway, calling for his wife. Snow turns to him, and then turns back. “I was going to take Neal to his day care…” Snow looks at her, and Regina tries to steel back the quiet horror welling in her throat at the thought of the silent hours, with nothing to do, walking aimlessly in a house that isn’t her own. “I can leave him here. If you wouldn’t mind. He would most certainly prefer it.”

“Yes.” she sighs softly, relieved. “I would love that.”

“Alright,” Snow nods and tucks her chin in, barely hiding her shy smile. “See you later, then.”

She listens to their steps across the hallway and down the stairs, moving all the way to the door and closing it again. The house settles around her in their absence, quiet and cold. In the silence, the thoughts and worries creep through her like a fog, large and formless. Slowly, she pushes the photo album from her lap and slides off her heels, stretching out across the bed that once belonged to Emma. Closing her eyes, she tries not to feel the empty space, waiting for time to pass more easily.

When she opens her eyes again, Neal is climbing up into bed with her. “Hey,” he mumbles sleepily, and scoots closer.

“Hello dear,” she whispers with a smile. “How are you?”

“Good.” He blinks tiredly at her. “Why are you in Emma’s room?”

So inquisitive. Just like Henry. “Well I thought I’d spend some time with you. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

He nods, accepting and she gently brushes back his dark hair. His eyes grow heavy, his eyelashes casting thin shadows across his cheek. Quietly, so quietly she almost doesn’t hear it, he says, “You’re like Graham, aren’t you?”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in; her thumb pauses on his cheek as she falls through a moment of breathless horror. She had allowed Graham’s presence to drift away from her mind, but now the fact of him has burrowed into this house, into the soft open eyes in Neal as he opens them to look at her. She searches his face quickly, looking for fear.

“What do you know about Graham?” She asks quietly.

“He doesn’t sleep. And he eats a lot.” He mumbles and stares up at her. “He said he died, too.”

She sighs deeply, her stomach tightening into a fist. “Okay.” she thinks quickly, over all the range of possibilities. “Well. How do you feel about that?”

Neal shrugs and doesn’t look away from her. “Do you get tired if you can’t sleep?”

Slowly, slowly she lets out her breath. “No,” she presses the back of her knuckles against his cheek, relief warming inside of her like his the touch of his skin against her fingers. “I still use that time to rest. Even if I can’t sleep.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Well,” she chuckles. “Usually I have your big sister to cuddle with me.”

“Ew.” He groans and pushes his face deeper into the mattress.

Laughing, she loops her arms around his waist, pulling him against her as he squirms like Henry would as a child, his grimacing face erupting suddenly in hard laughing lines and breathlessness.

After a while, when they are both quiet and the morning light is stretching out across the room, Neal shuffles close. “We can snuggle if you want,” he whispers sleepily and falls asleep. She presses a kiss against his head and smiles, for a moment completely relieved of her strange, difficult life.

As she closes her eyes, she imagines a world where she survived the crash. Where the photo album on the bed is filled with all of them, instead. For years and years, blending seamlessly into the next. Warm and steady: nobody missing, nothing misplaced, and Emma’s eyes full of life.  

*

The hours pass lazily. By mid afternoon, Regina is close to forgetting the worry and fear that had crept into her chest that morning as she stepped into the car. She is kneeling beside a small coffee table where Neal is drawing, his crayons scattered across the butcher paper. She watches him draw, listless in the warmth of the afternoon, enjoying the quiet as Neal’s bare toes occasionally wiggle where they are pressed against her knees.

When she hears the sound of footsteps in distance, she is not alarmed. She wonders if it’s Snow, coming back early. “When does your Mother’s work end?” She asks, glancing at the clock. It’s barely 1 o clock. Briefly, she imagines Emma jogging up the stairs in her red jacket, coming to visit.

But she wouldn’t, Regina knows, and remembers why when Neal says, “Not till a while.”

The footsteps are closer now, followed by the heavier sound of heavy boots. Heavier than the ones Emma or David wears. They sound like the hunter boots she had heard in the forest, clobbering over stones and icy tree roots, chasing after her. Her heart seizes in sudden fear, lifting her shakily to her feet.

“Neal. Does your father usually come in at this time?” Neal slowly shakes his head, putting down his crayon. Her heart fluttering high and red in her ear, Regina allows herself a moment of panic before she cuts it away, like a rusty faucet, squeaking shut all of her fears.

She grabs the phone on the kitchen counter and keeps walking, moving quickly up the stairs to the darker rooms above. She can hear Neal following hesitantly, and below that the familiar sound of Blue’s voice through the door, “Hello? Is anyone in here?”

Filing away the flutter of anxiousness, Regina slides into the bathroom door and locks it. Almost immediately, her heart bounces hard against her ribs, regretting the pale yellow walls and narrow tub, too small to hide in, too bright. She had known hiding spots as a child – the cold dark holes in a house where danger might be avoided – but she’s not hiding from her mother anymore and she is no longer a child.

Sitting tiredly on an old wicker basket in the corner of the room, she breathes.

“Are you okay?” Neal asks quietly, his voice small.

“Of course.” But she can hear the voices below, feet shuffling in with heavy boots, their hushed search for her mixing with the hushed sound of both her and Neal’s breathing. Below, she can hear Blue beginning on the first step of stairs.

She’s not getting out of this, she knows. It would be cruel to call Emma, now. Not when there is only a small lock and a door between her and capture. But she might not have another chance, and that thought alone pushes her thumb along familiar pattern on the keycode.

“Sheriff speaking.” Emma answers, assuming the quiet boredom of a slow day.

Regina smiles, “Hello.”

“Oh. Regina hey,” Emma’s voice becomes immediately warmer and Regina closes her eyes, listening to it. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Miss me already?”

Disastrously, her throat fills with tears. “I do.” Sorrow swells in her stomach like a wild, raging ocean. “I can barely get through an afternoon without needing to call you.” She says and imagines the large spacious hours waiting for her, locked into those small cold rooms. Shaking her head, she stares out at the small window, into the expansive blur of clouds and pale blue.

“You alright?” Emma asks tenuously, “You want me to come by?”

“No.” She sighs and presses the cold clump of her fingers against her forehead, shaking her head. She can only imagine the horror of that situation, Emma rushing out with wide eyes as they push Regina into the back of a car. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it dear, I’m only being mawkish.”

The moment might have been saved had the house not been so old, had they not been wearing boots. But it is, and they are, so the whole house groans and creaks like an old wooden ship, growing louder as their boots clatter up stairs and up and down the hallway. They’ve noticed the sounds within the closed bathroom door just as Emma noticed theirs.

“Who’s that?” Emma asks, but the tone of her voice is already knowing, filled with terror. Regina can only shake her head and press her fingers harder against her forehead, throat tight and eyes blurring with tears. “Regina. What is going on right now?”

“Emma.”

“I’m coming right now.”

“They’re already here.” She means only to deflate the growing purpose in Emma’s voice, to deter her. “Dear, it’s too late.”

Emma’s breath revs against her ear.

“No it isn’t,” she denies quickly, filling the other side of the line with motion. She calls to someone in the other room as cupboards slap close and keys rattle, the heavy doors swooshed open and shuddering closed. “I’m getting you out of there.”

“Emma. Emma, no.”

“Just stay where you are.”

“It’s not going to work, Emma.”

“Please, Regina, please. Just stay hidden,” she urges frantically. “I’m coming to get you.”

The line ends and Regina shivers with what she’s done, pulling Emma into the already collapsing curtains of an ending scene. Someone on the other side of the door knocks hard, the sound reverberating into the plaster and boards between them. She shivers and Neal shifts restlessly closer, pressing his leg against hers.

“Anyone in here?”

Neal wraps an arm around her and she pulls him on her lap. “Shh,” she hushes. “Everything will be alright.”

She hears the report of a voice from beyond the door and then Blue’s quiet, tapping shoes moving closer. “Is that you Neal?” Blue asks as the men with hunting boots and grabbing hands wait behind the door, “Are you there with Regina?”

Neal trembles, yelling out recklessly, “Go away!”

“Neal.” Blue’s voice is calm and warm, a trick. “Honey, is it just you in there?”

“It’s just me,” he says, and Regina just holds him closer. Knowing it won’t matter. No one listens to a child.

The lock slides away with a bright flash of blue magic. She delivers two kisses against the top of his head and whispers against his hair. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

She squeezes one last time before one of the men yanks her up by the elbow, her knee joints popping quietly as her legs stretch out, struggling for balance in their rushed movement.

Neal begins to wail, heaving heavy, shuddering sobs as a man roughly turns her around, snapping metal handcuffs around her wrists.

“Is this really necessary?” Regina snaps, as they push her by the elbows. “I’m not fighting. I can’t even do magic.”  

“We can’t take you in without them,” Blue says, and Regina doesn’t speak again, filled with hate and anger and sudden horrible understanding for her mother.

Neal’s cries follow them all the whole way down the stairs and out of the room and through the door as it shuts behind them.

Emma’s car doesn’t pull up on the driveway as they leave. It’s one relief, she thinks. Maybe not.

It’s only a few minutes later that she finds Emma’s cruiser barreling past them, blue lights flashing. She watches through the dark tinted windows, paralyzed, as Emma’s cruiser skids on the asphalt, whirling back around and roaring after them.  

Emma’s car approaches quickly and for a moment Regina breathes in hope, thinking of that of that day so long ago, when Emma had sped recklessly through the city, chasing after Lily and her stolen car. Her hands had been sharp and precise, moving the wheel in quick, competent movements. Regina had come to understand in that moment why Emma had been such a successful bail bondsperson.  She knew how to capture.

But this is not Boston, and Emma is not chasing her old Bug in a world without magic.

Blue magic blows like a cold wind and halts Emma’s car immediately, tires screeching terribly against the asphalt. It comes to a halting stop.

That might have been the end for anyone else. But Emma – stupid, stubborn Emma – is already slamming the door closed behind her, running, running, running after them. When the passenger door pushes out, she cries out, watching as Henry catches up, running after her.

Emma, a runner all her life, is already hitting the flat of her palms against the edge of the glass. Regina can see the frantic twist of her expression as she attempts to keep up, yelling loudly through the barriers between them. Her son quickly rounds the other side, running with a strength she would not have suspected in the bones of his knobby, thin childhood. She sees it in him now, as he strikes the glass with the flat of his hand.

Helplessly, she presses back, touching palm to glass where their hands strike, again and again. The sound of their distress reverberates around her.

They are not fast enough. All it takes is a slight touch of gas for the car to bump up past their beating, red palms, their yelling hoarse voices, getting lost in heavy breathing. Through the dark tinted window, Regina watches Henry grip desperately onto the metal bunk of the car, as though simply clinging onto something might make it stay.

But eventually, the car is too fast to keep up at all – a force too strong for legs and arms and beating hearts.

She watches them run, their faces strained and blotched, heavy with distraught as they keep running. They run even as the distance grows wider. Until it becomes impossible to see anything more through the glass than the long stretch of road and the foggy outline of someone not keeping up.

She watches them until she can’t, until they fade away completely; until the distance is too great, too difficult to recover, only then does she turn away.

*

The moment the car pulls up to the Helping Hand, the door opens and a hand reaches through to grab her elbow. Jerking away, she stands on her own with only mild difficulty, her hands still handcuffed behind her back. She walks towards the large facility nearly a step ahead of everyone else.

The doors slam close behind her automatically, the smell of antiseptics surrounding her like the bright white walls of the room. She breathes in hurried breathes, feeling her confidence fall down between her ribs like a deflated lungs. But as the guards step up beside her, her spine blooms with determination. She stands tall, holding her chin high even as her fingers curl uneasily behind her back.  

The process is quick. In another room, she is asked to undress and change into a clean white gown instead, waiting on the seat of a chair. On a tag, they wrap impatiently around her wrist is her name and room number. She is not spoken to. She does not speak. As they move her towards her own room, the limp collar tickling the back of her neck, she holds onto the anger beating hard against her rips, anything but the fear, the black fluttering panic filling the space of her head every time she blinks.  

The hallways are long, crisscrossing with stairs and large metal doors, locked shut. Filled with people like her. She can almost feel their hard, hungry eyes boring through the metal doors, staring at her.

A guard eventually opens one of the doors to a small empty room. There is a cot pressed up against the corner with lamp and a desk. A pile of books sits uneasily on a blanket on her bed, as bare and unappealing as the walls they push her towards.

“Am I just supposed to stay here now?” She snaps, feeling wild and reckless, finally too upset to keep silent. “What about my family? What about my life at home?”

“You’ll have visiting rights once every week.” A guard performs his usual voice, answering a question Regina only now realizes must have been asked a hundred times before. “The length of time will be based on good behavior.”

“Good behavior,” she snarls. “And just who is to determine that?”

The guard stares just to the right of her eyes. “Dinner will be in a few hours.”

She hesitates, even as her anger deepens. “I forgot to eat lunch,” she strains through tight teeth, hating herself for it – for the way her hunger makes everything else fall silent. “I need to eat something.”

“In a few hours,” he says, and closes the door.

*

Regina paces her room angrily.

She has no way of knowing how time passes now – with no windows, the only light she can see is the small glow streaming in through the small crack below the door. But even that is steady with artificial light, flickering only occasionally with a passer-by, moving quickly past her door. She doesn’t stop pacing. (She is afraid what her anger might become if she lets herself settle, lets her anger seep).

When a shadow stops at her door, she halts immediately, filled all at once with fury and relief.

The door opens.

“Finally,” she spits out, but follows their orders quietly, allowing herself to be handcuffed again. Her freedom to the guards is like a door with hinges, constantly being pushed shut.

There are stone stairs and then a long hallway and a door, opening up to a sea of strangers in white clothes. She blinks and momentarily pushes back, wary at the sight of so many people. But they move around the room, oblivious to her, talking in small tight clusters like they had that day a few months ago, at the welcome back celebration.

But this time she does not have Emma to lean back on. As they unclip her handcuffs and close the door behind her, Regina presses back against the wall like a bird trapped inside the house, keeping to the far distant corners of the room where commotion cannot reach her; she stays there, unseen, gently rubbing her wrists.

It is Gus who she sees first. She can see the dark curve of his forehead and the tall boyish stoop of his shoulders as he looks shyly around the room. Relief and anger collides in all at once, knotting in her throat. Gus is here. She won’t have to do this alone. But he’s here and she knows how – dragged out of his life, into the back of a car, a sad little cat and mouse game.

Regina struts forward, warding off the others with her glare as she cuts through the crowd. When she is close enough to call his name, he looks up at her, his face collapsing in the familiar lines. She envelops him in a hug, black stubble scratching against her cheek. He smells of gasoline and sweat, a world of struggle, and helplessly, she holds him tighter.

“When did they get you?”

“It’s been a day. You?”

“A few hours.” She sighs, “I’m so sorry, dear. How did it happen?”

“They dragged me out of my pickup truck when I was at a stop sign.” His hand forms a fist on her back. “Couldn’t even wait for me to get home. I’m guessing it was similar to how they got you.”

She closes her eyes, feeling momentarily pulled back to the last few minutes of her capture: the panic and fear, the stinging urge to cry, Neal’s wailing following her all the way down those stairs, hands slapping against the glass as the engine guns, the sound of shoes falling farther and farther away.

“Yes,” she grimaces and gently steps away. It’s all too much, the violent way she’d been ripped from her family life; like a hand pulling out from between her ribs, carrying the heavy muscle of her life. She’s angry, true. But beyond all that rage and hunger is an emptiness opening inside of her, like her mother’s dim eyes, like Graham’s blank stare.

“Hey. You okay?”

Looking up, she catches the soft concern crinkling around Gus’s eyes and immediately feels ashamed. He’s searching for something – the very same thing she searched in her mother’s face in the middle of the forest. It’s the expression she had cautiously looked for in her own face each morning, fearful of anything as blindingly hateful as hunger.

Gently, she squeezes his arm and steps back. “I’ll be fine,” she smiles, but her voice sounds thin and strained. “Dinner will be soon, anyway,”  she adds vaguely and Gus nods and doesn’t look away.

Pressing her thumb nail hard against her palm, she reminds herself to stay sharp and clear headed. To remain herself.

But when the doors open, guards walk out stiffly with guns strapped to their belt, the metal carts clicking quietly on rusty wheels. They don’t look anyone in the eye, staring only at the metal tins of food and the plates in front of them. She moves with everyone else through the line, rolling a dry anger in her mouth. She doesn’t want to think about what that means.

In line, Gus pops a bread roll into his mouth and says, as he chews. “Mills, grab me another bread roll.”

“You’re disgusting.” But she’s smiling, watching his smile push a dimple into his cheek. She nudges him lightly with an elbow. “And you’re halting up the line, dear.”

“You’re halting up the line,” Gus grins and nudges back. “Could you, please? You’re closer.” He tilts his head back the way Henry used to as a child, trying to wheedle indulgences from her. Instinctively she softens, her chest blooming with both love and grief; she leans towards the wide plate of bread, the warm dough touching the tips of her fingers before she is stopped by a hard, calloused hand.

“No seconds.” The guard’s voice is as flat and angry as the palm of his hand.

Her skin prickles, jerking back her arm, but he holds firm. “Let go of me,” she warns.

The tone of her voice lifts his brow a centimeter so that his forehead is creased. His fingers press tighter, sliding down to hold her elbow. “I suggest you keep the line moving, then.” he grunts, and presses his thumb hard against the inside of her arm.

White hot rage rattles through her and she feels suddenly as though she’s falling through it, grasping at air as she falls deeper. Her upper lip curls, staring hard into his face, flat and mulish.

Her rage must have frightened him because he shifts only a moment later, his other hand back to the gun on his hip.

“Hey, man. Let her go.” Gus steps in.

The guard turns to him, face clenched. “You want to get into this, too?”

“No, all I want is for you to let her go,” Gus says, his voice still calm, but his hands are tightening into hard fists at his side. She sees the guard notice, watches the way it changes his face. Her skin prickles with awareness; she knows men like this, knows what will happen if Gus gets more involved. She’s about to disengage, step away, but Gus (sweet, gentle Gus) puts his hand on the guard’s arm.

And the guard rears back, his gun out.

“Step back!” he shouts.

And though Gus is already stumbling back, hands in the air, there are guards closing in around them, the sound of their handcuffs mixing with the other sounds of the room. With Gus stumbling, the cries of surprise and fear, with the heavy boots of the guards. Regina knows her own voice is somewhere in the room as she moves to cover Gus, as a guard presses her arm behind her back and her head against the table – but she doesn’t hear it. She doesn’t hear any of it.

The only thing she hears is the hard beating of her blood, ramping in her ear. Some place inside her chest opens like the valves in her heart, pumping blood and rage through her, shutting doors and opening new ones. She doesn’t hear anything, not even as they lock the door behind her and leave her in a dark closed room.

She hears the beating of her heart and nothing else.

 

*

Her door doesn’t open again. Days pass, she’s sure, but she doesn’t know how many. She stares up at the unfamiliar ceiling, breathing quietly in the darkness; the feeling of something immense is all around her, like a bottomless ocean that lifts up around her arms and beneath her breast, floating her gently. She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them again.

There are moments that help pull her back – like in that car, the radio humming old 80s music while someone sings, the warmth of skin against the palm of her hand, the smell of salt and sand, the sun on her neck as she plays cards and wins, the stumbling steps on the stairs as a body brushes warm and steady behind her, the warm press of a mouth, the laughter and the sand.

But every memory she pulls up slides away again, even farther than before. Her mind hums, churning in constant movement, dragging up old memories and flattening them out again, into the dark ground of her mind like the soil she once pressed around garden flowers, their roots buried deep.

For a moment, a single moment, there is the smell of salt and sand, the cold air whipping around her, ringing with laughter. There is a flash of blonde hair and someone pressing against her back. Someone warm. And then it’s gone. She cannot think of it again.

*

When the doors open again, there is no guard on the other side.

Her room is flooded with red light every other second; it colors the walls of her room and the hallway outside and she stares out at the people streaming past her door, their bodies moving through the flush of red and then disappearing again. She watches them stumble in the dark, some breaking out into a blind run. It’s loud with the sound of voices and something else: the sound of her heart beating, hot and red in her ear.

She doesn’t remember standing, but she is aware of the moving room. A siren wails, the red light coloring the narrow hallways and stairwells and the open door _. The open door_. She is filled with the red light, disappearing and reappearing again, filling her head with its sound.

She hears a voice down below, rising up along the walls and hallways, calling her name. She follows the stumbling path towards the first floor, her stomach empty and her legs weak, but she moves her hands along the wall to keep her upright.

She hears the voice again, a familiar, soothing chant: _Regina, Regina, Regina._

At the end of the hall is a face and a world of memories churning like waves in her head, the blonde hair and the smile, the large blue eyes and the sound of someone laughing, salt stinging her cheeks, the smell of the ocean all around her as someone presses against her back, still laughing, and the name _– the name –_

Someone bumps past her and the memory falls away, her head filling with red instead. The noise surrounds her, loud and chaotic, the red disappearing and flashing again like the beating of her heart, beating inside her ribs. Her vision blurs, darkening with a wild, reckless hunger.

The face is slowly changing, the smile disappearing, still calling out her name. Someone yanks her away. They yell, “We gotta go!” her red hair flashing wildly in the lights. Their movements urge her forward, toward the open door. To _run, run, run_.

Her vision blurs entirely as she starts forward. Then everything goes black.

*

A gentle voice calls for her, and though she is not asleep, Regina feels herself slowly climbing up from some kind of restfulness deep inside, rising to the surface of herself. The room is dark, the yellow haze of evening light touching the far corner of the ceiling. A familiar face looms closer, her blonde hair nearly tickling her cheek before she tucks it behind her ear.  

“Regina, come on. You gotta come back now,” she whispers, her voice sounding strained and painful and Regina catches herself on it, lifting  herself back into the present. The walls of her house surround her again, more permanent than before. She’s in her room, in her bed. The ceiling above her is her own.

She blinks again, groggy as though rousing from a full night of sleep. “Emma?”

The hand on her cheek pauses then slips away as Emma stands, her knees cracking gently as she looms above her. “Regina?” She asks, her voice watery and unsure. “Regina, you okay?”

“Yes,” she sighs. “I’m fine. What happened?”

Emma hesitates, her face full of something Regina can’t understand. “We broke you out. Me and Zelena.”

“Oh.” Something is pressing against her memory, something urging, insistent, “I don’t remember…I don’t remember much.”

“Um. Yeah.” Emma quickly clears her throat, brushing back her hair again. “That’s alright. That’s probably – that’s probably for the best.” She looks flighty, and nervous.

Instinctively Regina reaches towards her, but her hand stops immediately, painfully, her skin pinching against the metal handcuffs around her wrist. She grunts, surprised, and tries to straighten up again, but stops. And stares.

Her hands are red. And handcuffed to the bed post.

Dread jabs in her chest like a jut of steel, like a sudden mouthful of ocean water. A mouthful of blood. She breathes in sharply, and can’t breathe out. “Emma,” she rasps, and jerks her hands uselessly.  It’s not just her hands. It’s not just blood. She can feel it suddenly in-betweens her teeth, underneath her fingernails, in the damp clothes still pressing against her skin. The gore of someone else. The violence of her hunger.

“No, no, no,” she yanks at her hands, anything to get out of this bed, out of the handcuffs, out of this moment.

“Hey, hey,” Emma’s voice jumps urgently, rushed into a soothing tone that doesn’t quite fit. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”

The door opens, Henry’s face poking out. His eyes widen at the sight of her and her heart crumbles inside. “Get out of here kid,” Emma snaps, her face strained as she tries to calm Regina in some small way, but Henry just stares, blinking, frozen at the doorway, and Emma whirls around. “Zelena, get him out of here!”

Regina can only see the door slam closed again, and the quiet, panicked sound of her breathing, a wordless horror drumming behind her ears and buzzing around her chest, an evacuated cavity. Across the wall is an oval mirror and Regina closes her eyes only a second too late, finding her dark eyes staring back and her mouth covered in blood. Like Graham’s once was. Like her mother.

Emma keeps whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

But it isn’t.

She isn’t. 

 

*

The faucet squeaks as she turns it off, the bathtub full of scalding, clear water. She slides into it, resting against the side as the water laps around her chest and shoulders, turning her skin pink. Gently, from behind the door, she hears Emma knock and call for her, her voice muffled through the distance. Regina doesn’t answer her. She doesn’t say anything.

She watches the blood slowly lift from her body, coloring the water in swirls of red. She stays there until she comes to a decision.

*

When she’s dressed, her blouse tucked neatly into her slacks, she has to steel the tremble of her fingers against the door handle. With a deep breath, she prepares for the long hours ahead, for all her quiet, painful lies.

And yet, when Emma pulls her into a hug, she wobbles, the feeling of Emma’s chin against her shoulder somehow bringing her to the brink of tears.  Gently, she steps away.

“I’m fine,” she smiles and brushes an airy hand through hair, struggling to breathe easily. “Where is everyone else?” Out of the sphere of Emma’s arms, she can blink back the blur of her vision.

As they walk down the stairs, Emma slides a hand into hers, and though it’s warm and familiar, she twists out of it, turning quickly at the bottom stair to step out of all the small habits of comfort – from the reach of Emma’s fingers. As steadily as a highway, she moves on to the next room.

Henry sees her first and stands up. “Mom.” His voice is quiet and rough, sore-sounding, and she feels a sharp, gutting pain at the look on his face – relieved and frightened, a ten year old all over again.

As she pulls him into a hug, a sudden fright opens from inside of her, expanding in her lungs as she breathes; with the memory of blood so close, it’s impossible not to feel like a trap, dangerous and deadly, filled with sharp metal and blood.

“How do you feel?” She asks, maintaining her smile even as she slides a careful step back.

“I’m fine,” he swallows, and slides his hands around his chest. “How about you – uh, do you feel fine?”

“Fine, honey. I feel fine.”

“Do you remember anything yet?” Zelena asks from the couch, and then clarifies. “From last night.”

Regina flinches.

“Zelena,” Emma snaps harshly, but Zelena doesn’t even flinch. She is watching her with sharp, focused eyes.

“No,” she answers, and there is no way to hide the tremor in her voice, the lie. “Nothing.”

Because. There are small details (the sharp sounds of bone breaking, the taste of skin, the ragged flare of a scream before silence – moments that snag like thorns and thistles against her skin, catching parts of herself as she runs blindly through them in her head) and though she wants to trap them inside, never let them leave again, a part of her still thrills at the memory.

A part of her yearns – remembering the thrill of a curse blowing darkly around her, the thunder of horse’s hooves, a heart in her palm as she curls her fingers – and that’s why. That’s why.

Emma quickly rescues the moment from silence, moving them gently onto easier topics, away from the blooming blood and horror of last night, of the future, and although conversations change, Zelena never stops watching her.

Later, after another brief hug from Henry and a moody glare from Zelena, she slips into her room and sits on the stiff chair beside her desk. The silver wristwatch ticks quietly in the silence.

When Emma enters, she undresses quickly and slides into bed, pulling back the covers to where Regina usually rests. Regina remains where she is, allowing an emptiness to settle like air through an open window.   

Emma hesitates, her hand sweeping over the pale blue sheets. “Aren’t you joining me?” Her voice fails to be light and coy; it falls under the weight of her dark eyes, the deep lines around her mouth.

“No,” Regina smiles lightly, brushing an airy hand through her hair. “Not tonight, dear.”

“Oh,” Emma’s face is mostly shadow, her white tank top taking on a dim blue, full of the dark in the room. She gently smooths a hand across the empty space beside her on the bed. “We can talk, if you want.”

“No,” she says, because she can’t manage the thought of it though she knows this moment will be remembered again and again in the morning, agonized over in a rush of other things more unforgivable.

Emma nods again and sighs, slowly sinking down into bed. There is a moment of quiet, the room full of Emma’s gentle, worried breathing and the sound of the clock ticking.

“I love you,” Emma whispers, her voice trembling quietly, and Regina’s chest collapses under all the grief and love in her chest. The urge to cry struggles on her face in the dark.

She knows she can’t say it back – not now, not with what she’s planning in mind. It would sit silently in Emma’s chest for years, like all the belongings in her room, gathering dust.

Still, she stands and slides out of her heels, struck by the need to communicate somehow. Sliding into bed, she leans her back against the headboard and stretches out her legs waiting for Emma to knowingly shift into place, laying her head onto Regina’s lap.

She sits there, gently combing her fingers through Emma’s hair – until Emma’s breathing evens out, until her eyelids fall closed, until the room is full of only the sound of sleep and a gentle, constant ticking.

She waits a few hours. She waits as long as she possibly can. But when the hours start leaking into a gentle light in the sky, she forces herself out of bed, gently laying Emma’s head back against the mattress. As she leaves, she takes the silver watch from the desk and slips it on her wrist. She never wants Emma to hear that sound again.

 

*

As she steps out into the hallway, she hears Zelena shifting in the guest room. She pauses, listening, waiting for her to come out, but the door never opens and the silence in the room returns. She leaves down the stairs into living room and out toward the front door.

Air bursts against her face as she opens the door, smelling sharp and cold. She had considered taking a car, but the thought of Emma or Henry needing to get it later set her stomach to stone. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she tucks her fingers under her arms for warmth and prepares for the long walk to the town line.

*

By the time she reaches the town line, she is shivering from the cold fighting against every urge to turn back and return home. Through the thin trees she can see glimpses of the clapboard houses beside the sea, sitting silently like her own house, still slumbering.

She steps close enough to feel the gentle push and pull of the town line, the other side waiting like a large immense ocean, waiting to reclaim her. She stands, shivering as it rushes around her legs, sucking away the soft ground from underneath.

Regina steps forward and then comes to a stop, her heels settling firmly against the cement. Although the other side of the road is clear, removed of her mother’s body, she can’t stop imagining what she would look like to whomever finds her first (please, please, anyone but them), curled lifelessly on the other side of town.

The thought sits in her as solidly as a sinking ship, and she stands there waiting for courage to return, to pull her along like a dry wind to the other side – but instead, she stands. The distant sounds of morning traffic drift along down the road, the random clatter of birds, and something else, something softer but growing louder. Picking up speed.

She understands a moment later, whirling around to stare wide-eyed as Emma’s bright yellow bug roars up the road, turning off suddenly, its engine still rumbling as the door is yanked open.

Emma steps out, wide-eyed and furious. “What the hell are you doing?” she snarls, moving in too fast, too close, her voice rumbling like an engine. “What the hell is this?”

Startled, cornered, Regina stumbles back a step, feeling the deathly buzz of the town line brush against the back of her heels. Seeing this, Emma comes to a sudden, jerky stop, a sharp, metallic sound coming out of her throat like when a machine breaks down and locks up.

“Regina.” She chokes, her face deathly pale in the cold light. “Come over here, right now.”

She doesn’t move. She can’t. “How – how did you know where I would be?”      

“Zelena warned me. She dumped ice water on my face. Will you please come back here, now?”

She holds her breath, trying to think quickly, to figure out what to say next, but it bursts out of her all at once instead, “Emma please, please leave. I don’t want you to see this.”

“I'm not walking away from here until I have you back here with me. Take my hand.” Emma’s voice shakes uneasily as she reaches out a hand towards her. “Regina, come on. You’re terrifying me.”

“Emma.”

“You can't be thinking this. You can’t possibly be thinking – you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t do that to me. You wouldn’t do that to Henry.”

Emma's voice sends shivers down her spine, her eyes as painful to look at as the barrels of those hunting rifles pointed at her heart. She conquers the urge to look away. “Henry will understand.” she says; she knows this fact like she knows the other impertinent details, the width of his hands and the shape of his face, his boyish smile and the final height marked on the door frame; it’s a fact that makes Emma flinch.

Because Henry will understand. He will continue to live as he has since her first death, injured but surviving.

But Emma…

The thought of it makes her weak. That Emma might return to the still-life of those pictures, her face flat and unsmiling as she moved through the motions, living separately, distantly, from everyone else; she’d continue to live in her cold immaculate house, long after Henry moved out, her life steeped in loneliness and an unhappy determination to keep living.

Regina closes her eyes, but can’t remove the images, the thoughts. She breathes in unsteadily, and sighs. “I don’t know what you expect me to do, Emma. I don't know what else I can possibly do.”

“That’s okay – that’s okay, we’ll figure it out. Just come over, take hold my hand, alright?” Emma’s voice is coiled into a false calm. In her face Regina can see her thoughts working quickly, climbing through a wide range of possibilities to get them out of this. To get them home.

Regina doesn’t move. “Emma.” she sighs, “I killed someone. I lost control and ripped a person to pieces. How do you come back from that?"

"I don't know, but I swear to you Regina, we'll figure it out. Please, please, just step away from there."

"What happens when I lose control again, Emma? Do I get locked up in the basement like my mother?”

“No. God, never.”

“So what’s your back up plan, then Emma?” She asks, “How are you going to stop me from killing people when I’m too far gone to stop myself?” Emma opens her mouth and then closes it, her face flushing with panic as she struggles with her words. Regina continues ruthlessly, “and what about the town? How long do you think it will take for me to come back here again, but on somebody else’s terms? How long before I’m forced over the line like my mother?”

Emma's wide grey eyes fill with tears, “I would never let that happen.” But her brow is already folded with all of the other promises they have made, back when they thought they would be able to keep them. She drags pointed fingers through her hair, uncaring on how it snags. “How do you know it’ll even happen again?”

Regina closes her eyes, the memory of blood filling her mouth as the dark churning of her hunger spills over like a river, overflowing, flooding the rest of her, inundated and uncertain.

“Because I want it to to,” she says finally, tired and weary. “It’ll happen again because I want it to happen again.”

There is a moment of silence, filled only with the sound of Emma’s quiet restlessness, her chattering teeth and shifting feet as she struggles for something to say. Regina watches her hands move in tight circles around her arms, her hair blowing lightly across her face as she squints at her through the morning light.

Emma lets her hands drop. “Okay,” she says, flatly, and Regina blinks, startled by the sudden certainty in her voice, in the sureness of her face. Emma stares back steadily, unflinchingly. “So it might happen again.”

She blinks. "What?"

"You might backslide, you might even do it a few times."

Regina stares and stares, but Emma’s face doesn’t give. “You can’t possibly be telling me you’re okay with that.”

“I’m telling you it doesn’t change anything for me," she says firmly. "I told you I was here for all of it. I still am."

“Emma,” she warns sternly.

“No, listen. I know you got a whole life behind you, telling you to get out of this before it gets bad. I know you’re scared to be back in this place, feeling helpless like this – but this isn’t you right after the curse. This isn’t you, stuck with your Mom while everyone cuts you out of your life. This isn’t you alone in a castle. This is us. This is you and me and Henry. We’ve always leaned on each other. So  _lean_ on me.”

Regina tries to steel herself from Emma's words. "What about my mother, then?" She asserts wearily. "Love didn't save her. What makes you so sure yours will?"

"Regina, you're not your mother," Emma's wide grey eyes are suddenly clear and bright. "Maybe I'm Zelena - maybe I'm hopeless, maybe my love is exhausting - but you are _nothing_ like your mother. You might have learned violence from that woman, but that doesn't make you her -not even close. There is nothing about you that your mother could reach."

For a moment, she simply stands, blinking back the warmth in her eyes. Emma's words make their way through her, stirring inside something large and wild like a flock of birds lifting into the air all at once.

“You saw me, Emma,” she tries weakly. “There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t covered in blood. How do you get over that?”

“I don’t know. How do you get over anything? I’m still working on losing you the first time.” Emma asks, her voice raw and honest, and Regina feels pulled towards it despite everything. "I might always have that part of me that feels less sure, less alive than the rest of me. You will too. We’ll work on it together – like we always do.”

Regina opens her mouth, but she can’t speak. Something is lifting inside of her. For a moment, she can see the span of years between them – the whole curve of their story – filled with moments, with clumsy hugs and arguments, the cautious starts and stops of a relationship, their love and their fear catching each other, pulling them up through impossible distances; all the love and lost and longing – the sum of their life – rushing all around her. Pulling them back together.

“Please,” Emma whispers, and reaches out for her again. “Come back. We can do this. What we have – it’s enough. We’re enough.”

Against the back of her ribs, she feels the faint beating of her heart, and something else. It hums in her ear: come back, come back, come back. With the danger of the town line still buzzing against her heel, the distance between her and Emma feels suddenly vast and exhausting - as though she was back in the ocean again, numb and stiff, struggling to see the blurry edge of the shoreline. But she moves for it anyway, cutting through the cold air and her terror, through her numb fingers and the weight of her whole life around her. She doesn’t stop moving.

Emma’s breath tumbles against her mouth as she leans up to kiss her, and though a white light doesn’t sweep away her hunger or her fear, something grows certain, pulling her up from the dark the way she had that day, collapsing against the beach, breathing in a new life heavily.

She closes her eyes and kisses Emma deeper, and deeper still. She breathes. She's here. She can do this.

She's alive.

She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive.    

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reaching the end, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Longing will Snag itself on the Reeds - Manips](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4682711) by [Dragoon23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoon23/pseuds/Dragoon23)




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